


The Runner

by JaneEyre1847



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: A ton of swearing, A/B/O, AU-Modern, Alpha Ben Solo, Alpha Kylo Ren, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Anassa Omega, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Competence Kink, Competence Porn, Evil People Being Misogynists, Evil People Being Transphobic, F/M, Fluff and Smut, Hiking, M/M, Many tons of mountains, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Old Sports Cars, Omega Rey (Star Wars), Omega Verse, Omegaverse, Protective Ben Solo, Queen Omega, Redeemed Ben Solo, Slow Burn, Suspense, Trailrunning, Trans Male Character, Trans Poe Dameron
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:34:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 89,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21615412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneEyre1847/pseuds/JaneEyre1847
Summary: Rey Niima has a one-in-a-billion secret. If found out, she'll become the target of religious fanatics and political reactionaries the world over. If they catch her, she'll lose everything, including her career, her freedom, perhaps even her mind. So, she pretends to be a normal, if highly unusual Omega, using her unique talents as an endurance athlete and automotive engineer to make a life for herself and craft a meaningful future.Ben Solo is finally,finallyfree of his past. Still young, still a highly dominant Alpha in an Alpha's world, he has enough money from selling his startup to start a new life in Boulder, Colorado, safe from his mistakes, safe from his family, and safe even from Snoke. All he wants now is to be happy and share his life with the right Omega.It's too bad Ben's past is coming for him. It's too bad his past is coming forRey.Completely written. Updates Wednesdays and Sundays.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 656
Kudos: 915
Collections: Reylo, Reylo modern!AU trash





	1. The Anassa

**Author's Note:**

> Completely written. Updates 1-3 times per week.

2019

Rey woke as she always did--before dawn, and alone. At her phone's chiming, she blearily fumbled for the glowing device's off button in the deep darkness of her bedroom and forced herself to sit up. She flicked on her bedside lamp, blinking against the too-bright bulb that she always meant to replace with a dimmer one, and opened her nightstand drawer to pull out her packet of suppressants. She dug through the annoying industrial-strength foil with one practiced thumbnail, tossed the fat pill back dry, and then retrieved her phone again and skimmed her messages. No texts, and just one important email from last night--Rose confirming that they were going to meet at school this morning.

Nothing from Finn. No big surprise there. But she still scrolled down until she saw the last email she'd gotten from him, two weeks ago.

_Hey Peanut, sorry for taking so long to get back to you. Writing about the old place is the hardest thing I've ever had to do, except, you know, riding a shitty bike 300 miles to get away from it. So, I'm just putting my head down and grinding out the pages. I can't think about anything else, except when Poe makes me eat, sleep, or listen to him talk about how the training you have him doing is kicking his fine ass, haha. I guess I'm still on schedule, and I'll let you know when I'm getting close to done. Love ya, bae._

She felt a squeeze of pain from missing him and pushed herself out of bed to keep from dwelling on it. Still in her holey pajamas and fuzzy socks, she padded into her little closet of a study and sat down at her design station. She jiggled the mouse, and the screens flared to life in the dark. She felt a surge of comfort, of pleasure, as the CAD drawings of her inverter array flickered into place. Machines made sense. Engines made sense. Their problems could be solved, even when life's other ones couldn't. She immediately sat down to work.

Two hours later, dressed, caffeinated, and eating, she was in a far better mood. She scribbled notes on a little spiral-bound notebook about team tasks while she plowed through her usual breakfast of four eggs, a mound of steamed greens, and three enormous pieces of buttered bakery toast, then dropped the pen to scroll through the news on her phone. She snorted when the first headline in local news informed her that she was officially living in _GQ's_ "Worst Dressed City in America" again for the fourth year in a row. She glanced down at her crappy old race T-shirt, the jogging shorts she'd had since high school, and her stupidly expensive running shoes, and shrugged to herself. Boulder was a university/high tech town in the Rocky Mountains; everyone from the homeless to software magnates lived in polar fleece and sport sandals. If that meant she never had to feel bad about always being ready to run, good for her. She clicked through to the snarky article and read until it mentioned that Boulder had also been voted the "City That Looks Best Naked." She shut her phone off. Fat lot of good that would ever do her.

She dropped her dishes in her rebuilt dishwasher, grabbed her backpack, armed her security system, double-checked her door locks, and jogged off the porch to unlock her Volvo. Her 1972 P1800 was a ridiculous-looking little sports car, with tiny rear fins like a Playskool hotrod, black paint faded to a sad grey, and a handbuilt engine that could do 180 mph.

Rey slid into the mushy seat, pumped the gas twice, dropped the heavy clutch, turned the key, and felt her whole body light up at the roar of the engine.

 _Good baby,_ she thought at the sound of 700 horsepower thundering through the aluminum-block V8.

She pulled out of her rutted driveway and onto the canyon road toward the university. Hungry to hear another human talking after her weekend in solitude, she flicked on NPR, where a smooth-voiced host took his time telling her that the stock markets were volatile and the President was behaving badly. No surprises there.

She was halfway to school and about to switch to the college-radio station when she heard, "And now a special report from the BBC World Service.... Romanian officials have announced that an Anassa Omega girl, also known as a Queen Omega, has been born in the city of Bucharest."

Rey darted to crank up the radio's volume knob, glanced in the rearview mirror, and started looking for a place on the winding road to pull over so she could really listen.

The announcer went on, "This one-in-a-billion birth is being hailed by conservative religious leaders and other Essentialists as proof of God's favor in the region. The Romanian government says it is preparing the security measures required to keep the girl and her family safe until the girl is mated and sequestered under her future husband's protection."

Rey's hands tightened into a death grip on her steering wheel, and she felt her upper lip raise in an unconscious snarl.

"A spokesperson for the unnamed family says that marriage offers are already pouring in from around the world, with proposed bride prices in the millions of dollars."

 _You poor baby,_ Rey thought, feeling nausea washing through her rage, picturing a helpless newborn who was already being bartered for. _You poor little girl._

"The Romanian prime minister, Nicolai Golescu, assured the public that the child will be assigned a full-time security detail and provided with secured housing in an isolated region. He also noted that his son, 35-year-old Petre Golescu, has himself made the child's family a marriage offer."

Rey felt her stomach knot. Her vision started to swim, with grief or fury, she didn't know. She needed to get off the damned road.

As she powered through turns, looking for a pull-off, the host kept going. "Anassas have unique biochemistry that causes, among other effects, a high likelihood of non-singleton pregnancies. Their likelihood of naturally conceiving twins is over fifty percent per pregnancy, with a twenty-five percent chance of conceiving triplets. However, it's not uncommon for Queen Omegas to have as many as five live births per pregnancy. This characteristic has led to their other historical names, including "Mother of Armies," and "Mother of Cities." With specific dietary regimens before pregnancy, Anassas can even be made to conceive triplets, quadruplets, and other high multiple births, as well as all-Alpha, all-Omega, or mixed-designation pregnancies, though they rarely give birth to Betas. Because Anassas are so rare, little research has been conducted to explain the causes of these characteristics. It's suspected that they're related to extremely high levels of the hormones oxytocin and omegagen that are known to be released during the Anassa's pregnancies, and that are speculated to be released during claiming. Researchers also believe that high blood levels of these hormones are what cause Anassas to become essentially singleminded mothers and mates, with no interests outside of homemaking after they're claimed."

 _Thank God--_ the parking lot by the river overlook. She took a hard, tire-squealing left into the nearly empty lot, swerved into the nearest parking space, braked to an abrupt halt, turned off her rumbling engine, and slumped back against her headrest in the sudden quiet.

The announcer droned on over the relative silence, and Rey listened almost unwillingly.

"Though the Romanian child was detected during routine genetic testing, most Anassas have been discovered when presenting, when they develop what has been described as an overwhelmingly attractive pheromonal scent, along with typical Omega traits. Traditionally, Anassas have been claimed only by sociopolitically powerful Alphas. In ancient times, military leaders with an Anassa mate sometimes saw enemy armies simply surrender prior to battle, based on the assumed dominance of the general. Historians speculate that this factor contributed to the rise of a number of notable military leaders, including Alexander the Great, Atilla the Hun, Genghis Khan, and most recently, Nazi German High Commander Anakin Vader, whose wife was the Anassa Padme Amidala.

"U.S. Senator Paul Snoke, who founded the Essentialist group The First Order, has reached out to the Romanian family with an invitation to bring the child to the First Order's Colorado compound. Snoke's third wife, the Anassa Susanna Snoke, gave birth to twenty-one Alpha sons over five pregnancies before her death from eclampsia at the age of 30. Snoke commented that "all Anassa births are a bless--"

Rey angrily twisted the radio knob to silence, and leaned her forehead on the steering wheel, tear-filled eyes closed. She let herself rest against the worn leather cover for a long moment, trying to bring herself back to the present. There was nothing she could do for that baby, _nothing._ And she herself was as safe now as she ever had been. She blew out a long, cleansing breath and looked out at the cottonwoods along the river.

The new leaves on the trees were luminously green against the red canyon wall, and the river roared white beneath the bluebird sky.

 _How can life be so beautiful and so unfair?_ she thought.

She swiped at her eyes, then flipped her forearms so she could see the tattoos on each wrist, wrapped across her carpal scent glands. "σιδηρομήτωρ," they said, inside the splash of red roses. _Mother of Iron._

She rustled through the glove compartment for a tissue, blew her nose, then restarted the Volvo. For a brain-scrubbing moment of relief, she revved the V8 so loudly that it vibrated her skeleton and obliterated her agonizing thoughts. Then, she backed the car into the shadiest parking space beside the river and got out. She tucked her earbuds into her ears, turned on her iPod, and cranked up Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the Ode to Joy.  
  
This was a good place to have stopped, she realized. It was a little over five miles to the automotive engineering lab at school, and she had 37 minutes to get there, rinse off in the lab shower, and get to work. A few five-minute miles would take the edge off. She grabbed her backpack out of the back seat, double-checked that her pillbox, toiletries, extra shirt, and phone were inside, then tightened the laces on her running shoes. She strapped the pack tightly around her waist, ribs, and upper chest so it wouldn't bounce as she ran, then rotated each ankle in turn to warm it up, _left circle, right circle, left circle, right circle, left circle, right circle._ She slammed the Volvo door, locked it up, tucked away her keys, and ran.


	2. What You Need to Know About Rey

2008

  
  
It was Rey's 11th birthday. She'd bought herself the most amazing present, the fairytale present, the one that would magic her away from Unkar Plutt and back to Mummy and Dad. Sitting at the dining-nook table of the wrecked RV she lived in, she opened the little cardboard package and gently pulled out a brochure, a sealed plastic test tube, and a bundle of forms. The brochure was covered with pictures of smiling people who all look a little alike, some with sepia-toned faces, some in black and white, some in color, with big beehive hairdos or 80s perms or pretty modern blowouts. Their broad smiles and sharp noses and pale eyes were all the same. _We are a family,_ these pictures said, _for hundreds of years, we have always belonged together._ And the map behind all their pictures meant they were reunited from all over the world. You could see their houses--some mansions, some cute little bungalows, some ranch houses, even a castle. Not one of them lived alone in a Jakku scrap yard, that was for sure. These people were all together, known, their mysteries solved. Some looked like queens and kings. Some were in wonderful long dresses. There was a laughing grandma, and handsome men, and perky looking women, and three cuddly little babies.

Rey traced their faces with her fingers, thinking, _This could be my granny, and these are my cousins and uncles. And this could be Mummy, if her eyes were different. Mummy healthy and smiling with smooth, bright hair. Mummy happy to see me after all this time. And those babies, they could be my baby brothers and sisters!_

Rey practically squealed with pleasure to think of it.

Rey had paid $300 for this kit, money she'd saved up for three years, since she saw the Helica DNA ad in the back of a _National Geographic_ at school. "Find Your Family," the ad said. _That_ had caught her attention. She had dug recyclable cans and bottles out of dumpsters and turned them in, sold kids her free-hot-lunch cookies for quarters, raked yards, and pulled weeds. She'd made almost half of it from scrounging the change out of every single wrecked car that came into the scrapyard where she lived, griming up her fingernails by digging between seat cushions and raking her fingertips under the seats where she couldn't see. One guy had left a $100 bill in his ashtray and never called Unkar to get it back, the most astonishing thing she could imagine. That $100 was her miracle money instead.

Inside the Helica brochure in her hands, it said, "Find family in new faces, with relative searches all over the world! Our database includes more than half the world's population. DNA markers for genetic characteristics let us tell you the secrets of your personality, your ethnic heritage, and medical information you need to know!" She didn't care so much about the secrets of her personality or whether she had a Chinese ancestor. _Just her family,_ that's all she wanted. Though, she wouldn't mind knowing early if she'd grow up to be an Alpha, Beta, or Omega. _Omega,_ she desperately hoped. Mummy was an Omega, and Rey wanted to be the _best_ mummy, too, when she grew up.

She put the brochure down and opened the packet of forms. The first one was instructions for putting her DNA in the tube. Apparently, spit was full of DNA, because she had to spit into the tube, filling it all the way up to the green line. She worked up a mouthful and let it drool into the tube. Disgusting, and it barely filled in half an inch. She bit at her cheeks to generate more, and spit again, and again, and again, for what seemed like a ridiculously long time, until the tube was full. She had drool on her fingers and all over the tube. _Blegh._ She screwed the provided cap on until it clicked, locked, and then wiped everything off on her jeans. She took the anonymous ID number sticker off the instructions and put it on the tube, then set the tube reverently back in its padded, pre-stamped box. Then she went to the ID form. Because the one good lesson Unkar Plutt had taught her was to be wary of all authority figures, under Name, she filled in "Jane Smith." She used her nicest handwriting and gave the address of the condemned house on the other side of town that she'd listed on the money order. For Profession, "waitress." For Age, "18." She added a few more fake details, leaved the phone number space blank, folded the forms back up, and laid them over the test tube like a blanket. She folded the pre-glued box top down, sealed it with a kiss, and zipped it into her jacket pocket. She left her RV, and trot, trot, trotted, five miles, to the mailboxes by the gas station, where she kissed the box one more time before dropping it from her sweaty hand into the outgoing-packages slot.

The next day was Sunday, and she woke up before dawn to sneak the bucket and cleaning supplies from the junkyard bathroom and carry them, in an annoyingly slow, off-balance walk, all the way to town, and then another two miles around, to the driveway of the condemned house on the long dirt road. Jakku was a British Petroleum company town in the middle of the emptiest spot in the Mojave Desert, and people cycled through it pretty fast. The PhDs and engineers who worked at the Extraction Engineering Complex stayed for a long time and lived in nice houses, but the roughnecks and refinery workers--some American, some brought in from the UK as skilled labor--tended to slap together down payments for little shacks like this and then drink up the mortgage payments, leaving the sad little shells behind.

When she got to the little house, Rey ripped off its CAUTION tape and safety notices and tucked them into her garbage bag. She cleaned the porch, front door, and all the front windows, then put plastic flowers nicked from the graveyard up the road into little cups on the windowsills. She swept the steps and front walk with Unkar's ratty whisk broom, and picked up all the windblown rubbish in the yard. Then she placed her final touch: a slip of paper that said "Smith" in the little frame on the front of the door's mail slot. The place looked way better than Unkar's place now, so cute that maybe she and Mummy and Daddy could live there when they come back. The mail carrier would never suspect.

Twenty three days later, she came back for the twentieth time (no good reason to check for mail on Sundays), in the blistering heat of late afternoon, peeked through the locked door's mail slot, and saw a thick white envelope on the dusty carpet inside. Backpack banging against her hip, she sprinted around to the back of the house, jimmied open the cracked window she had used to get in, and climbed through to the empty kitchen. She ran to the envelope and was somehow already ripping it open by the time her knees skidded to the floor where it sat. She flung the empty envelope to one side, pulling out the stack of papers with shaking hands.

**_Dear Ms. Smith,_ ** ****

**_As President and CEO of Helica DNA, I am writing to you personally with momentous news about your genetic profile._ **

Rey stopped reading right there and shut her eyes tight, feeling her heart squeezing in her chest. This was _it._ This was the moment when she found Mummy and Dad, found out that she was special, she was wanted, she is _someone._ It will say that she was a princess, she though, that her mother had been looking for her, that her daddy was coming to get her!

**Though were were unable to locate any of your relatives in our genetic database**

Wait, what? _WHAT?_

**we have discovered that in addition to your status as an Omega, of which you must already be aware, you have the rarest and most famous secondary designation, Anassa. Also known as the Queen Omega or the Mother of Many,**

Rey let out a horrible cry, like a run-over animal, and her hands clenched into fists, tearing the paper on one side. She knew what Anassas were. She'd read the book about Padme Amidala, about how she was locked up after she presented, and not allowed to be anything but a mother, how the beautiful, amazing woman gave up everything, everything, _everything_ that she was and then she died anyway, just because her evil husband left her and her babies got taken away.

_NO. NO. That CAN'T be me!_

**the Anassa has unique and exceptional characteristics. They include high fertility that can be manipulated intentionally, powerful positive emotions and behaviors related to mating, family life, and childcare, as well as historical status as a member of an extraordinary lineage of wives.**

_Lineage of_ wives. _That... that... dooky head!_

**We deeply respect your privacy, as we do all of our clients', but I must request that you immediately fill out and return the enclosed form that will allow Helica DNA to legally release your name and location to the federal government and local authorities. This will allow you to access the security services that you will require, as well as special housing, health education, and legal representation for your future mating journey. Frankly speaking, it is a something of a miracle that you have not yet been claimed, which our in-house Alpha team members, including myself, have confirmed from olfactory examination of your genetic sample.**

They had _sniffed her spit_.

**You must also be aware that should you emigrate, even for a short time, to a country in which the paying of bride price is legal, your parents would be eligible to receive a very large sum of money as compensation from your future husband. I, myself, would be happy to rent for you and your family a home in Pakistan, and to offer your parents a sum in the high seven figures. I am a healthy, kind man, aged 53...**

Rey dropped the paper like it was a scorpion in her hand. She noted dimly that the stained wall in front of her was surging backward and forward at her, then turning blurry and streaming, then tilting, then laying on its side as her whole right side thudded once and hurt. Filthy carpet under her cheek was getting wet, and then rasping her face as she convulsed with sobs. She put her hands over the sides of her neck, where the hateful glands must surely grow, so nothing could touch her there, nothing no one, never, _never_ could touch her there. As her breath heaved through her, she knew that no one could ever be allowed to find out. No one could ever know. Not for her whole life. She could never... tell anyone, make a friend, be a friend, be a mama, have babies, her family was gone she didn't find them that's why they left her they knew she was a monster freak slave nothing but a slave she couldn't feel her fingers everything was cold, the floor under her cheek so dirty like her dirty broken wrong wrong wrong

Nausea rose in her through her sobs and she sat up enough to heave out bile onto the floor, splashing a little onto her hands and the horrible letter.

_The letter._

She had to _get rid of it._

She couldn't risk carrying it home. What if she dropped it and someone tried to hand it back to her and they saw, what if she got hit by a car and in the hospital they looked in her backpack, what if-- _NO._ Still sobbing, she scrambled to the dirty kitchen. By the stove was a red matchbox with a couple of wooden matches poking out of the end. She grabbed the box and ran to the living room to get the papers--she could burn them in the sink. The papers lay scattered in the last slant of light through the front windows.

The _windows._

She had cleaned them with her bare hands. And the door, and the porch... she had touched so many things when she had scouted out the shack and then checked for the mail every day. Doorknobs in every room, the kitchen windowsill, counters, so many things that she couldn't remember them all. Her fingerprints were everywhere in this house. Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys would find them in minutes. If someone from the DNA company came looking for her here... and the police had her fingerprints, because they had taken all the kids' fingerprints in third grade, in case they were kidnapped.... and they talked to the police, all those _Alpha_ policemen, they could find her. The old man with the DNA money could find her, if he told the police what she was and where she'd said she lived.

_NO._

She went to the closest window, yanked the ripped yellow curtain off its rod, balled it up in her hand, and used it to scrub the front doorknobs, the windowsills, the mail slot, the porch railing, the rest of the doorknobs, everything in the kitchen, every window, everything that had been cleaned, everything she'd touched. She couldn't see very well through the tears, knew in a panicked way that she was missing things, knew she was making mistakes that would get her locked up forever and mated to some horrible old man, if not the Helica man, then some other, the second Unkar found out.

She _couldn't_ make a mistake. No mistakes, not about this, not ever again.

Nobody wanted this house. It was abandoned, trash. It was ruined already, like her. It wouldn't matter if she destroyed it to save herself.

Still gulping sobs, Rey scooped up all the papers in the stack--the horrible letter, the forms, the description of her genetic ancestry, which now wasn't even worth looking at--and mashed them into a crumpled ball under the front window the remaining curtain. She tied the curtain she'd cleaned with to the one still hanging, then draped the end of the dirtier one over the papers, making one long wick that reached almost to the ceiling. She opened the door behind her, then struck a wooden match on its box and stuck it under the papers. They caught fire instantly. For just a moment she watched, mesmerized by the blooming flames as they ate the terrible words up and the paper they were on, until they were nothing again, as if they never were. The fire was so pretty, the paper turning tangerine orange and charred black, with a flicker of blue where the flames licked over a glossy brochure. Then the first curtain caught fire, and the flames raced so fast up the second curtain, and then almost instantly to the ceiling, that Rey gasped. The house had sat dryng for decades in the oven of the desert, and it practically exploded into flame. Rey watched just one, two, three seconds longer, making sure the papers were nothing but ash, then bolted out the front door. Her feet hit the dirt running, and she didn't stop until she was miles and miles away.


	3. As Nature Demands

2019

Rey, with her hair wet and her shirt changed, arrived in the lab a good five minutes early. She walked in a circle around the engine, her heart and mind still aching, but she soothed herself by letting her attention rest on something simple: exactly how much of a pain it would be to upgrade the battery terminals to zinc. Then, even before she heard her, she smelled Rose come in the open door behind her, smelling positively _livid_.  
  
Rey spun around, eyebrows up. "Hey, what's up? Did something happen?"

The other Omega practically growled, and dropped her backpack with a thud on the concrete floor. "I'm fine. I'm just still mad about the date I went on last night. You know when something is so terrible that you just keep re-running it like a crappy movie in your head? It was _that_ date."

Rey picked up Rose's backpack and hung it on a peg by the door. "Oh God, what did they do?"

The tiny woman said, "I cannot believe I'm saying this without throwing up in my mouth--the guy brought along _As Nature Demands_. He brought it out at the dinner table halfway through the date, smelling totally _smug,_ to see if I agreed with it."

Rey gasped in real horror. "No he did _not!_ Did you just walk out? Please tell me you ordered a $100 bottle of wine and then poured it on him and then walked out." She looked over her friend, checking for damage. She was clenching her fists, storing her all that furious tension in her little hands. _Not good._

"Oh no," Rose said, working up to a full rant. "I stood there in front of the whole restaurant and told him exactly what I thought. I said, 'That Essentialist propaganda is poisonous, oppressive, neo-Nazi bullshit that no sane person of any designation would touch with a ten-foot pole,' and that he should be ashamed of being seen in public carrying it around. And then he jumped up like he was going to hit me or something, and then a bunch of Alphas at the next table stood up to defend me and I just wanted to _scream,_ because then it was all about Alpha-on-Alpha _bullshit,_ instead of the fact that _that loser_ thinks Omegas should be put in compounds, and Betas should be servants, and Alpha women should be sterilized! _GAH!"_  
  
Rose thumped down into a lab chair and dragged her fists over her face as she groaned, tugging her pretty little cheeks down so hard she had bulldog jowls for a second.

Rey pulled up the chair next to her and took Rose's tiny, callused right hand. "Fucking knot-heads," she said emphatically. "Essentialist Nazi knot-heads."

"All knot-heads," Rose agreed bitterly, automatically opening her hand for Rey's familiar ministrations. "I'm totally going to bomb his inbox with those rebuttals Finn wrote last year. I hope he chokes on them."

Rey firmly massaged Rose's palm and fingers, working out the tension. Rose could not get carpal tunnel, especially for bullshit like this. As she dug into the muscles, Rey said, "I can't wait 'til Finn's book comes out and we can just carry copies around to wallop Alpha bros over the head with them."

Rose snorted, "Yeah, they're gonna love hearing that their uber-mensch hero who wrote it was an ugly, sad virgin who threw temper-tantrums and beat off in the woods. I really, really hope some Essentialists aren't so far gone that they can actually listen to someone who lived on that stupid compound and hear what it was like." She looked down at her loosening hand in Rey's and took a deep, cleansing breath. Some of the red faded from her cheeks and she sighed, "OK, that feels like heaven. Has Finn told you when it's gonna be done?"

Rey began gently rotating Rose's fingers back and forth in the joints, to help her stay nimble. "Soon, I think. The Senator gave Poe and Finn permission to work remotely until Finn wrapped it up, so Poe took him to a writing retreat place in the Poconos. I think they're gonna be gone for a couple more months."

Rose sat up straighter, confusion making her cock her head. "Wait, are they not going to be here for the race? I thought Poe was training with you?"

Rey clarified, "Poe and I are Skyping once a week about his workouts, and then he's gonna come out the week before to get acclimated again, whether Finn is finished or not. No way was he going to dump a year of work, especially after everything he went through to get his hormone mix balanced for the practice races."

"Right, I forgot about the hormone thing," Rose mused. She gently tugged her right hand free from Rey and put the other hand in its place. "OK, now massage this one," she said, almost imperious in her confidence that Rey would do it. Rey _loved_ taking care of her people. It was half the reason there was practically a fistfight at the sign-up sheets when Rey announced she was planning to spin off a company from the electric engine she was designing for their fourth-year team projects. (The other half was that Rey was undeniably a killer bet to ace the class and actually start a unicorn-level startup.) At her friend's confidence in her love, Rey smiled, her world sucking less already, and got to work on the hand.

"What about all the race setup?" Rose asked. "Poe's, like, The Guy for setting up courses, isn't he? That's his thing."

 _Uh-oh._  
  
"Kaydel and I are going to do the setup," Rey said, not looking up as she massaged the dense muscles around Rose's thumb.

Rose looked affronted. "Rey," she cried, "you cannot add one more thing to your plate! Are you crazy? You have midterms, you keep redesigning the engine, you have to manage the team, and you literally train four hours a day. How does that even work? When do you sleep?"

Rey avoided Rose's gaze, gently squeezed her hand, and put it back in her friend's lap. "Speaking of working, we need to get started," Rey said, and got up to go to the big steel tool chest. She slid open its top drawer and groaned. "God, why can't the Teedos clean up after themselves? Is it against their religion to put a wrench back in its slot?"

Rose was not satisfied. "We are not done talking about this!" she said. "I'm worried about you."

"Rosie, I'm OK," Rey replied, studiously tucking tools back into their places. "I like to stay busy. I like to work. I like to train. I'm _fanatical_ about getting enough sleep. I'm fanatical about my sleep the way the Teedos are fanatical about not putting away tools. And the only thing I'm doing on the course is marking it." She pulled out a multimeter, unwound its sensor wires, and handed the ends to Rose. "Here, would you hook this up to the terminals on the secondary generator? Kaydel's going to prep the sites for the aid stations and then I'm taking half of spring break to hang the trail markers on the trees."

Rose clipped the sensors on, but as usual, didn't drop the subject. She said skeptically, "Your spring break is running 100 miles through the woods by yourself? _Rey."_

Rey protested, "No, no, it'll be perfect ramp-down training! It'll give me a huge advantage in the race."

Rose grunted, unconvinced. "Ugh. You're going to win anyway."

Rey just looked down at the multimeter and said blithely, "No counting unhatched chickens. OK, spin up the engine, starting at five percent." She glanced up as Rose switched on the engine and dialed up the power with a rising _hum,_ then said seriously, "I need that prize money. Twenty grand is half of your first year's salary, you know, paltry though it be." She gestured _up, up_ at the dial Rose was turning, watching the numbers on the meter as she did. "Keep going, keep going... hold on, back it down to thirty-five percent. Something's weird."

Rose wrinkled her nose at Rey. "Holding at thirty-five. I'm not saying I don't want you to win, and that I don't totally want to work for you when we graduate, because I do. I just want you to have a life."

Rey shook her head, not looking up. "This _is_ my life. "

"A _life_ life," Rose said. "Do you even date? I know you like boys. My crappy date notwithstanding, some of them are great."

Rey replied, "We're a few amps short of what we should be seeing. I think some of the micro-inverters are underperforming. We're going to have to check them individually."

Rose glared at her, mouth twisted in frustration. "You did not answer my question."

"I do like boys," Rey said, still not looking up. "Just not as much as I like the rest of my life." She wandered over to the stack of foam-lined trays. "Would you start pulling the inverters? I'm going to set up the test bench."  
  
Rose turned off the engine's computer, smiled and shook her head. "Someday you're going to meet someone you like better than running, and you're going to be in so much trouble."

Rey finally looked straight at her as she handed Rose a tray. "Here's a tray for the inverters. Fill 'er up. And I'm never going to stop running, Rose. Never."


	4. Some Things You Need to Know About Ben

Ya Little Cuddle Bear was playing with ChooDog while Dada got ready to drive his car around and around and around against the other cars on TV. The three-year-old wasn't really aware that the dog, whom Dada named Chewie to memorialize Mama's favorite suede boots, was an untrainable and somewhat terrifying Chowchow-St. Bernard cross. All he knew was that he wanted ChooDog to _mind_ like the doggies on TV.

He patted the floor in front of him and said, "Hew! Come hew."  
  
ChooDog cocked his head and pawed at the floor.

"Hew, hew, ChooDog!"

ChooDog did not come.

Ya Little Cuddle Bear felt the mads and sads rise up, as they often do in a three-year-old, and then something in his throat _twitched._

 _"Hew,"_ he shouted, and ChooDog trotted right over. Little Bear waved in a circle, and Choodog chased his tail. The boy gestured grandly toward the floor, and ChooDog laid down. Little Bear _growled,_ because it was _fun._ ChooDog whimpered and rolled onto his back, baring his enormous neck and belly. A shadow fell over Little Bear, and Dada was looking down at him, mouth open, eyes wide.

_"LEIA!"_

* * *

Benny Boy was four. He was playing at Poema's and they had their GI Joes in the sandbox. Ben had the one with the rifle, the one with the hand grenade, and the one with the pistol, but Poema had the one with the rocket launcher. Ben remembered about sharing but he _needed_ the one with the rocket launcher.

"Gimme. Gimme."

Poema didn't hand it over. Benny got mad. It was _his._ He felt the _twitch._

_"Give. Me."_

Poema lowered her eyes and handed over the plastic man without protest. Benny noticed that the world was suddenly silent. He glanced at Mama and Lieutenant Shara, who had been chatting together in their lawn chairs a few feet away. They'd set their drinks down and looked away from him to look at each other, mouths in a grim line.

* * *

Benny was six. It was his birthday, his party, his presents and candy and _cake cake cake cake cake!_ He and Sammy, Tommy, Sara, Matt, McKenzie, Poe, and Doph were all screaming and laughing, playing tag on the lawn by the pool, and Benny yelled " _SWIM!"_

Doph and Sara swerved like two birds leaving their flock and jumped in the pool. Benny almost levitated in after them, his joy was so perfect, his cannonball making an enormous splash. He sank down, down, grinning in the water, half-blinded by the curtain of bubbles coming out of his nose. He heard a long, muffled sound, higher pitched than should've cut through the water, and a grownup body plowed into the water in front of him. It swam under the water toward the floor of the deep end, where a dark shape waved its limbs like a drowning spider. Benny stopped breathing out bubbles so he could see, and there was Mr. Mitaka, wearing his slacks and shirt and nice shoes, swimming toward Doph on the bottom of the pool.

Benny looked up, and Sara's legs were above him. She was swimming fine, why was Doph not swimming? He'd told them to _swim._ Mr. Mitaka was pulling Doph up by his shirt, powering toward the air above them. Benny pushed hard with his feet and swam up.

When he reached the surface, his mother said in the meanest voice he had ever heard, "Ben, get over here NOW!"

She almost dragged him from the pool as Dad pulled Doph from Mr. Mitaka's arms and onto the dry concrete. Doph was hacking and gasping and then he was wailing like a little baby. Ms. Mitaka was bending over Doph and frantically running her hands over his face and chest, asking, "Why, why would you jump in there, you can't swim, you could have drowned you could have died, why would you do that?"

Doph howled, "BENNY MADE ME!" and in the background, still treading water, Sara was yelling, "I want to STOP let me out Benny _let me out!"_

Benny looked at his mother and she said harshly, "Sara, come out of the pool."

Sara kept treading water, yelling, "Let me OUT, Benny!"

Mama narrowed her eyes, then closed them, then took a deep breath and said in a deep, thick voice Benny had never heard, _"Sara, come here now."_

For just a moment, Sara hesitated, looking at Ben, then she dog-paddled to the ladder and climbed out, skinny brown legs shining with water. Three days later, Mama and Dad told Ben that he was going to Uncle Luke's school to live.

* * *

Ben was six. He cried in his new room, face smearing tears all over his wet pillow. He hated it here, he wanted Mama and Daddy, and why did they hate him so much, he didn't mean to hurt Doph and Sara he _didn't,_ he just wanted to go home, please, please please please _home._

* * *

Solo was six. It was his fifth day at the Skywalker Academy for Contemplative Education and he moped down the hall, cream-colored uniform sweater too big, ugly brown slacks short enough to show his ankles, three thick, boring textbooks heavy in his arms. He hated it here, he hated himself, he was bad, he'd almost drowned Doph and made Sara scream, and he hadn't gotten to say goodbye to _anyone._ The halls echoed with noise and stank like grownup men, and Uncle Luke wasn't even his uncle here, just mean Headmaster Skywalker.

A big ugly kid bumped into him hard, scattering his things, and when Solo went to pick them up, burning with shame as the other kids stared at him, he saw that something foreign was sticking out from between the pages of his social studies book. He stepped out of the chaotic river of students navigating between classes, and pulled out a photo of a big, handsome man in a tailored black uniform. Behind the man were hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers lined up in perfect rows, as tidy as a field of wheat.

Solo flipped over the photo, and someone had written on the back in spiky, old-person handwriting, "Ben Solo, this was your real grandfather. He was a great man. He was just like you." Then, beneath that, "From your secret friend."

Solo knew he should tell someone about this, his mother had said to always tell if a stranger gave him anything at all, but he instead took it right back to his room and sat on the bed, alone, staring at the photo. The man, who looked a little like Mama but was definitely not Grandpa Bale, looked very strong and very calm. He was in charge of all those men, Solo knew.

Solo would keep this photo for himself.


	5. The Mountain, Part I

2019

On the first day of his new life, Ben laid out on his penthouse's floor everything he needed, everything he'd bought a piece at a time over the past few months to prepare for the next two weeks. Most of the pieces were Alphalite, absolute top of the line gear that was sized, designed, (and priced) specifically for Alphas at their leisure. The tent was big enough for four restless men and made of a ghost-light composite fabric. The sleeping bag was 800-fill down with a waterproof exterior and silk lining, big enough for him to starfish in. The inflatable ground pad blew up to fit under the sleeping bag with four inches of air beneath. The stove was an ArcBoil, designed to bring a half-gallon of water to a boil in three minutes, or to slow cook for hours using almost no fuel. His food was a combination of cryogenically dehydrated camping food (for the second week of his trip) and fresh gourmet groceries for the first week, to be kept cold in a glacial stream. His clothes were all ultrafine, itchless merino wool, with silk base layers, down insulation, and breathable, waterproof, heat-reflective top layers. His little sundries--the UV-light water filter, the titanium cooking gear, the silicone toiletries bottles--combined cost enough to pay a poor person's rent, and the cost of the big stuff would've paid his own mortgage for a month. Somehow, he'd have to make it all, plus his paperbacks and journal, fit into the backpack, the "one thing" in "one of these things is not like the others." It was canvas. _Canvas._ When his mother had given it to him, he'd considered throwing it away. He'd considered burning it. But he was free now, and freedom meant that if he wanted to... not examine, but maybe _glance at_ his deep past for two weeks, in the form of Han Solo's canvas and steel, 1970s-era backpack, that was his prerogative. With the straps expanded to their maximum, it fit him like a glove, despite the fact that he had a few inches and 50 pounds of muscle on his big Beta dad in his prime.

Ben carefully settled each item into the packframe, setting the heaviest items on the bottom and the taller items, like the tent with its poles, along the sides. He arranged and rearranged them, trying on the pack for comfort then switching a few things around so they didn't dig into his back or tug him off balance.

He looked over the apartment once more before he went to load the car. On some unnameable impulse, he'd spent his evenings for the past three months perfecting his place. It felt homey and genuinely lived-in for the first time since he'd bought it. Bright modern art filled the walls, the kitchen was stocked to the max with cookware, crowned by a set of solid-copper pots hanging from one wall, and the bed in the master bedroom looked so lush that it was clearly meant to be laid on and _rolled_ in. He could no longer feel particularly weird about the fact that he'd gone to Nest & Den not once but six times, the only Alpha in the whole shop, during this period. It was really the only place in town to get the primo linens he'd seemingly required. The peace of mind from getting this place settled before his trip had made the tetchy embarrassment worth it.

It was the first house he'd _ever_ lived in that actually felt like a home, at least since he was six. But he didn't want to think about that. Not today. Today was going to be beautiful.  
  


* * *

After Ben shrugged on his backpack at the trailhead, checked his boot lacings, rubbed in the last white smears of sunblock, doused himself in mosquito repellant, and settled his baseball cap on his head, he took a few deep breaths of this place before lighting out. He was simply stricken, as always, by the Arapahoe Wilderness's endless beauty. The deep greens of the conifers sang in harmony with the endless shades of grey and brown stone, a knee-deep fireworks show of flowers exploded through the grass and shrub cover, and it was all lidded with an endless sky ringed by mountains so enormous--all peaking between 12,000 and 14,500 feet--that they only served to draw the eye up, up, up, making the sky feel even more monumental. The smells in the air weren't human smells--few pheromones, no exhaust or asphalt or chemicals. No fucking dryer sheets or outgassing carpets. Just the wet-sand smell of glacial runoff, fiercely sweet flowers, resinous trees, heavily biotic soil, and the unique, cold, clear smell of the enormous mountain sky. Ben turned in a circle like a child, loving everything he saw.

He needed this, needed wind on his skin, rain on his face, cold, fragrant air cutting into his lungs. There was nothing to do or be here. Nature didn't give a shit about him, but it would never hurt him on purpose. It was just alive, and being, doing what it did.

He strode onto the trail, powering up its steep, reddish line. Most of the time, Ben's body felt like a burden--huge, lumbering, clunky, always consuming or excreting, always starving for something he couldn't quite get his fill of. He was capable of power, of crushing things and bodies that got in his way, that didn't do his bidding. He was capable of speed, too--he was a decent sprinter. But mostly, his body reminded him of how the world he lived in now wasn't quite designed for men like him. That most of this world was made for betas. Chairs and couches were too short, car seats too small. People walking around him looked well-made, slim, and elegant compared to him, the lunky giant. Even before, when he was on the inside, he'd always wanted to fit, and somehow never had. Nature and the mountains, though, were big enough for him. The trails that stretched through miles of backcountry were long enough for his legs. Wherever he'd come from, after days or decades, the mountains welcomed him back.

He purposely kept his mind off the few things he'd committed to doing when he got back--meeting new people in Boulder, steeling himself to use some of the less-gruesome A/O dating apps, and finding the right investments for the funds from (finally) cashing out of his startup. Instead, he just let ground roll away under his feet, puffing a little on the steepest of the stony slopes, and felt his whole body seeming to expand to fit the fragrant, almost infinite space around him. He decided which of the books in his pack he'd read first _(Moby Dick,_ then _The Old Man and The Sea,_ just to keep the theme going), which snacks he'd eat first (the sticky, sickeningly sweet fruit and nut bars, _delicious),_ and when he might get around to summiting the three peaks and handful of passes around his reserved campsite. Those would all be long day hikes, and he thought he might just skip them altogether if he was feeling lazy (he knew he wouldn't; he never did).

He was two miles up the steep ribbon of the Diamond Lake section of the trail when he heard the soft _gritch-gritch-gritch_ of light feet on the gravel behind him. Trail etiquette said he should pause and move out of the way of someone going faster than he was, so he stepped to the side just in time for a woman, all whipcord and bone, to flit by him with a breezy, British "Thanks!"  
  
She was past him before he could even turn to see her face--she was _trucking_ up the hill--and she was all but scentless. A tall Beta, then, with fantastically long legs and a beautiful ass under a ratty pair of running shorts. He bit the valve of his Camelback to take a rubbery-tasty sip of water, watching her red-windbreakered back practically sprinting away, her brown ponytail bouncing. The trail ahead of them was steep, like a root-bedeviled staircase of rocks, and Ben watched, impressed, as she bounded up it without even slowing down. Ben thought for a moment that she was running in high gear to pass him, or might've be showing off, but as she almost floated up the trail, further, further, not even looking down to keep from tripping over roots, he realized that that might just have been her normal pace on this trail. By the time she rapidly disappeared over the next rise, his eyebrows were raised in a _wow_ expression.

 _She_ has _to be a professional athlete,_ he thought.  
  
The elevation and slope of the trail up here kept most reasonably fit people at a strolling pace with lots of breaks, and a man as fit as he was could move at an out-of-breath jog _at best_. Because of its altitude, Boulder had a shockingly large international contingent of Olympians, though, who lived in town and trained in the surrounding mountains.  
  
_She's probably on the UK marathon team,_ he thought. It wasn't the kind of sport that made people famous, but it was still impressive as hell to see. She'd probably been trying to hit one of the summits before noon, he realized, to get some time in at high altitude before the near-daily lightning storms were likely to blow in up there. Even sitting around resting for an hour at the top of a 13,000-foot peak would help pump up her red blood cell count, making her more lungs and heart more efficient for whatever sport she was making her living at.

He started hiking again, thinking idly about how much training a woman would have to do to get so fast, until he found the "Site 6" trail marker and turned south to get to his reserved campsite. It was closer than he'd have liked to the trail, but it couldn't be helped. This landscape was riddled with abandoned silver mines and a veiny network of snowmelt rivers, and the Parks Service didn't want people falling into either. The place where he'd be spending the next two weeks was on a little knoll that gave a magnificent, 300-degree view broken only by the mountainside to its north, and it was just far enough from a snowmelt stream to not spook the wildlife that drank there. Ben entered the cleared circle and took in the view with deep satisfaction, his Alpha brain thinking, _Defensible, good._ He hunted around to find the least uneven ground to put his tent, and chucked branches, rocks, and pinecones off the spot. He pulled the tent from his pack, separated the fabric from the poles and stakes, and with a few clicks of the carbon fiber pole joints, had the frame pieces slipped through their slots in the whispery fabric. The whole thing popped up in a few minutes, and then Ben wrestled its titanium stakes into the rock-riddled soil to keep it from blowing away in the hard gusts the mountainside was prone to. Ben dragged his pack into the tent, blew up his sleeping pad with great, heaving lungfuls of air, and then unstuffed his sleeping bag. He hung his headlamp from a loop in the tent ceiling for later, strung his LED lights around the ceiling, blew up his two air pillows in their silk covers, fluffed his down jacket back up, stacked his books and journal by the sleeping pad, and placed his food and extra clothes where they'd be convenient. As a (very) big human Alpha, he didn't have to worry about bears and small animals raiding his camp--they'd instinctively veer away from his scent. All that was left was to scout the stream down the slope for a good place to put his cold food. He was walking along the duff-covered bank when he glanced up behind him at the mountainside. On the trail that cut its side like a slim gash, halfway to the peak, miles from where he left the trail, was a tiny red blob, moving fast.

_Holy shit, it's that Beta woman._

She must've been doing 6-minute miles up the 35-ish degree slope.

_Unreal._

Ben couldn't help but briefly imagine running into her on the trail, introducing himself, flirting with her. It was ridiculous, of course--anything that happened between them would have to be purposely temporary, and he didn't seem to be built for that anymore. He knew he could never mate a Beta, not with his ruts, not with his longing for an Omega mate's nurturing softness and magnificent heats. But he'd bet this woman would be intriguing. Female professional athletes, with their fierce self-discipline and independence, usually were. And that body... so powerful, so sleek.

_She looks like she'd take exactly what she wanted in bed._

He let himself fantasize for a few seconds on the idea of her imagined face--beautiful, of course--and her breasts--improbably perfect, of course--above him in bed, or her lovely, muscular back to him as she took his cock. His brain hinted that she didn't look soft enough to whisper in his ear as he held her afterward, and that she couldn't take a knot, but that was what fantasy is for. At least, fantasies of Omegas, he thought, and shook off the moment of indulgence. He really needed to get on the program of trying to date again. It was time.

He found a two-foot-deep hole in the streambed, in the lee of a big, mossy stone, plunged his hands and dry bag of perishable food into the hole, and secured it with a rope slipknotted around the rock. Shaking the icy water off his hands, he marched back up the slope to his tent. Now that he'd gotten set up, he planned to spend the rest of the day staring at the bottoms of the trees and reading, just to get the trip started right. Back at camp, he dragged the final luxury out of his backpack--a huge, parachute-silk hammock with soft straps to protect the trees he'd hang it from. He found an acceptably distanced pair of pines right on the border of his campsite, upwind of the fire pit and far enough away to avoid sparks, and slung the great swath of green fabric between them. Then, he returned to his tent, pulled out _Moby Dick,_ and prepared to disappear from the current universe.

Something like an hour and a half later, Ben's brain swam back into the forest from the mid-Atlantic, and he realized he was hungry enough to chew railroad ties. He left the book swinging by itself in the hammock, went to the stream, dunked his arms into the numbingly cold snowmelt, and pulled out his drybag. On top was the roast beef sandwich he'd bought from Salvaggio's for that day's lunch, plus the ingredients for chili. He pulled everything out and stacked it precariously in his arms, then dropped it all off at the fire ring by his tent. Then he grabbed his ArcBoil, pots, and utensils, and got started cooking. When the chili meat had browned in the pan and been combined with the rest of the ingredients to slow cook, Ben headed for the very highest part of the knoll, found a perfect stump to lean against, determined that it was acceptably ant-free, and stretched out his legs. He could see for something like 500 miles in any direction except through the mountain at his back, and his gaze skipped like a stone almost to infinity, from one mountain range in the distance to the next range behind it, until their skylines were nothing but the palest grey smudges. He followed a few white clouds with his eyes for a while, then glanced back at the ridgeline behind him. Quite a few hikers were moving slowly up the switchbacks toward the peak, alone or in small groups, their bright clothes making them stand out from the mountainside. He occasionally caught a whiff of someone going by on the nearby trail, usually a big Alpha. Omegas, with their little legs and powerful urge to den, didn't usually spend much time in the woods, and mated Omegas pretty much never camped unless they were with a brood of kids. Ben chewed through the rich sandwich, occasionally licking drips of heavenly jus off his fingers, thinking about how if he mated, he'd likely have to give up the backcountry except for rare trips or ridiculously chaotic, cumbersome hikes with children. He'd miss this like breathing, but he could live with that, for the right woman. For a family.

By the time his enormous sandwich was gone, his brain felt calmer than it had in... years. At least. Maybe a decade. Maybe ever. The sky was enormous around him, and nothing but the mountain, wind, trees, and a handful of chipmunks and pikas had any claim on his attention. He was free of Snoke, free of his family, free of his business, free of money concerns, and practically free of his secrets.He could just live for a while, with nothing but books, food, and the pleasures of the wild to think about. He took a few long breaths, watching the trees lean away from the wind. He tipped his head back, pulled his hat down over his eyes, and let himself doze.  
  


* * *

Ben woke up easily, an ultra-fresh breeze pulling him from his nap without the loginess and dread he usually felt on awakening. The sun had moved in the sky--it was probably midafternoon. He stretched like an enormous animal, bent at the waist to grab at his toes, rotated his neck, then levered himself off the ground. He glanced around him, pleased with everything. Up on the mountain, little bits of color--blue, purple, black--moved up or down the trail. When he squinted at the switchbacks just below the far-distant ridge of the mountain, he saw a spot of red moving down at a speed that made the rest of the little dots seem like they were standing still.  
  
_The Beta woman,_ he thought happily. It must've been. She'd likely stayed well past noon because the weather had been so perfect and altitude training was so much work to get. Now she was flying down the mountain, as smoothly as if she were on a sidewalk. He watched her idly, thought again of manufacturing a way to intersect with her, and let it go. He couldn't even know if she was single, or interested in men, or Alphas, and there'd be no point anyway, really. Not for him, not for what he was looking for. He shook his head at himself and strode back to his campsite, occasionally glancing back up just for the pleasure of watching her descend. There were still people going up at that time of day, thru-hikers headed for the pass below the summit, on their way to somewhere else. He saw that she raised her hand in greeting every time someone neared her, but barely slowed down as she passed them by.

By the time Ben was stirring his slow-cooking chili, the smell was fantastic enough that he grinned about not having to worry about bears. The stuff was going to be stellar. Since it had apparently become his new hobby, he glanced at the mountainside again and saw that the Beta woman was almost back down to treeline, where his camp was. She'd pass a big family of campers headed for the pass, and then reach an elevation where Ben might conceivably run into her. As the family approached her, this time she slowed way down, waved as usual, and then stopped, seemingly to chat for a moment, bending at the waist to engage with the children. She motioned up the mountain and then toward the pass at some question from one of the adults, then seemed to do a funny little pretend run-in-place for the benefit of the smallest child. The whole group shifted around, as if laughing with her, and Ben couldn't look away. She was adorable. After a few more moments of chatting, the family started to move on, and the woman stood aside as they went. When the group was past, the woman started to quickly trot down the hill again, and Ben saw the moment when she turned her head to look behind herself at the family's retreating backs and tripped hard, sprawling onto the rocky trail. 

He winced for her. Shit, that had to have _hurt._

Her whole body seemed to ball up in pain, but she must've stayed silent, because the family behind her didn't look back at her laying on the ground. She stayed there a moment, curled, and Ben instinctively thought to run up there after her--she might very well have broken a bone. After a few seconds, though, she sat up and started checking herself for injuries. She looked over her hands, extended each foot in turn, pulled her windbreaker sleeves up over her elbows, and pulled up one edge of her running shorts, where she'd likely gotten some road rash on her hip. She put her face in her hands for a moment, and Ben wondered how much pain she was in, and if he was now actually justified in going up after her. When she slowly stood, he decided that he'd instead wait at his campsite for when she came down, and ask if she was OK. She took a water bottle out of her waist belt and poured some of it on her hands, knees, and elbows, likely washing dirt off of bloodied parts, then patted her knees dry with a sleeve. Ben winced in empathy, knowing it must've stung. She started to walk slowly, as if limping on both sides, and Ben knew she was likely in a lot of pain that would only get worse as she went.

He suddenly thought to retrieve his first-aid kit from the tent, which would give him, he smiled to realize, an unassailable reason to talk to her. He wouldn't want to see an athlete of her caliber getting an infection, after all. He went to his knoll and waited for her to vanish down through the treeline and then slowly, slowly, slowly now, make her way through the forest toward him. When she appeared on the trail not far above him, she was definitely limping and bleeding down her legs from both knees. He moved a bit to reveal himself to her peripheral vision, and when he saw her head turn in his direction, he waved his bright red first-aid kit over his head. She hesitated a beat, and then waved back and left the trail to hobble toward him.

As she got closer and he could really see her, he realized with rising excitement that she was _lovely_ \--finely sculpted features in a youngish, elfin face, shining brown hair, and wearing a sheepish smile. She was tanned, and as she got closer, he realized, freckled. God, he was a sucker for freckles. The phrase, "a pair of fine eyes" also floated out of his literary memory, from where he didn't remember. Her hair was a little frizzed out from her ponytail, giving her a halo in the afternoon sun.

"Saw me wipe out, did you?" she called, looking chagrined. _Definitely British._

"I just happened to look up when you fell," he lied cheerfully. "Looked like you could use some supplies. How bad is it?"

She glanced at her hands and forearms, which were also bleeding, and said, "Nothing soap and antibiotic ointment won't cure. You sure you want to be using your first aid supplies on me, though?" She nodded toward his visible campsite. "It looks like you're going to be here for a while, and I can get down to my car pretty quick. You wouldn't want to run out."

 _Oh no, missy,_ he thought, to his surprise. _You're not getting out of letting me help you._ "I have plenty," he said firmly. "There's a stream just below my campsite. Come wash up."

She smiled a little and let him lead her slowly down the hill, a breeze pushing lightly at their backs. When they got to his campsite, she seemed to appraise it with some private thought that made her smile dim.  
  
"Your family out hiking?" she asked.

"No family," he said carefully. "It's just me here."

And there, the smile is back in full force again, and became a little _impish._ "Ah, a glamper, then!"

He pretended to look offended at the term. "Hey now, no need for insults."

She was just as cheerfully fake-offended in return. "Glamper's a high compliment," she said, those eyes bright, "as a solitary man with a six-person tent, a hammock, and oh my God, a dutch oven over an ArcBoil, would know."

He felt a little ridiculous, since she was obviously the kind of mountaineering badass type who slept under a tarp when she camped. "I'll be out here for a couple of weeks, so I figured I might as well be comfortable." ****

Her smile was warm, warm, warm. "Nothing wrong with comfort," she said, as they reached the stream. "There's just usually not much of it up here."

"You seemed pretty comfortable until you fell," he replied, happy to turn the conversation to her. He popped open the med kit, handing her its bottle of stream-safe soap and a handful of disinfectant wipes. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone go up a trail as fast as you did when you passed me. Are you a pro?"

"In a way," she said, as she stripped off her shoes, socks, little runner's backpack, and windbreaker on the creek bank. Ben studiously tried and failed to look fascinated by a chipmunk off to his right, thinking that stripping down to a faded race t-shirt, neck gaiter, and holey running shorts should not be an erotic act. She had surprisingly strong arms, and though he'd never been attracted to masculine-looking women, both his brain and... other regions... admired her obvious strength. Barefoot, she waded carefully into the stream and started splashing her wounds, and he was relieved to see that though her kneecaps are in bad shape, her shins were mostly unscathed. "I'm in grad school, too. I race, but only because I'd be running anyway. I mostly save up my prize money to fund my startup."

He said nothing about the implication that she was winning professional races, and latched onto the one thing they had in common. "Huh. I just sold a startup," he offered. "What's your product?"

She looked up, startled, as she popped open the soap and started working it into her exposed wounds. Nose wrinkling from the sting as she scrubbed, she said, "You just sold a startup? You're the first successful entrepreneur I've met in ages. Boulder’s lousy with dropouts, but not so many who've had an exit. I'm building an electric engine for heavy construction equipment. High horsepower, low torque."

He blinked in surprise. "I would not have guessed that."

She eyed him, slightly sourly. "And what would you have guessed?"

 _Shit._ He shouldn't have said that. _Don't sound like a sexist asshole, don't sound like a sexist asshole...._

"IT, maybe?" he tried. "You seem very bright." _Fuck._ "Not that you wouldn't have to be bright to design an engine," he said in a rush. "Obviously. It's just... automotive is... an unusual field for a woman."

She softened just a little and smiled wryly. "I'll take 'unusual,' It's better than 'unnatural,' which I get often enough. And the top two guesses Alphas make about my product are one, shopping app and two, makeup line. Which," she said, gesturing at her distinctly unmade-up, unshopped self, "are obviously based on excellent deductive skills."

_Oh, she's clever, too._

She'd finished washing and splashing herself and started working the antibiotic wipes over her scrapes. Ben started peeling open the edges of the gauze pads and bandaids he thought she'd need. She asked, "So, what about you? What did your company do?"

"Do you want to guess?" he asked.

"Ha! No!" she laughed. "I'd probably be dead wrong then, wouldn't I? I'd say, 'finance,' and you'd say, 'international consortium against greedy financiers' or something."

Now it was his turn to grin. "Solar systems. We use fiberoptics to transfer light from building roofs into their interiors or solar battery banks."

"Are you pulling my leg?" She looked at him, head cocked.

He grinned. "Nope. But after I worked out the basics of the design, I realized I liked running the company better, so my other engineers did most of the development."

She shook her head wonderingly. "Still, that's a lovely coincidence. Your invention might conceivably interact with my invention. Small world, isn't it?" She looked at him more intently, tried to dry her wet right hand against her shirt and winced as her scrapes rubbed on the material. "I'm Rey, by the way. Rey Niima. I'd shake your hand, but I'm still a bit bloodied."

"Ben Solo," he said, "Have some bandages." He held out the handful of bandaids and gauze, and as she sloshed out of the stream toward him to take them, he felt as if a wild deer was approaching him to eat out of his hand.

She took them with a "thanks" and started fanning her knees to help air-dry herself, then started sticking the gauze down with the tape. When she ran out of tape, he handed her more, until the roll was almost gone.  
  
"I really can't thank you enough," she said and started putting her things back on. "This is much better than having black flies follow me all the way to the parking lot."

 _I'd follow you... oh stop it,_ he thought. He was suddenly hit by inspiration. "I've been cooking chili. It's ready by now. Can I feed you a bowl before you go? You must be starving, with that workout you did."

"Oh no, I couldn't poss--" she started to say, and was cut off by an emphatic growl from her stomach.

"You've been betrayed," he said, raising an eyebrow at her midsection.

She grinned again. "Story of my life. But I really couldn't impo--" _Growl._ She gently smacked her belly. "Quiet, traitor." She looked up at him hesitantly, gauging his response. "If you really have enough..."

"Do I look like the kind of person who does not make plenty of food?"

She eyed him up and down, seemed to flush just a bit, and shook her head.

He was a very big man.

"Come on. I could use the company." He turned without waiting for her to waffle again, and gestured for her to walk beside him. She limped up the pine-needle-covered hill to his camp without another word. When he glanced over at her, the sun shone on her bright, clean skin, and he could hardly bear how beautiful she was.

 _To hell with it,_ he decided, _she's not leaving without us exchanging numbers._

At camp, he gestured for her to take a seat on the log by the fire ring while he dug out his one bowl for her and his titanium mini cooking pot for himself to eat out of. He ladled them both full of chili and handed her his polycarbonate spoon, taking the spork for himself. She breathed a deep faceful of the steam coming off the dish and moaned a little to herself. She immediately dug in, no longer hesitant about feeding herself. He watched, almost mesmerized for a moment, as she plowed through the food. He realized she must've had to eat twice as much as a normal woman, at least, to fuel that body of hers.

"Why is this so delicious?" she said, through a mouthful. "The flavor, and _God,_ the smell, it's not _normal._ It isn't _right."_

"Marinated bison meat," he said smugly. "I ground it at home before I left. With butter and bacon drippings."

"You're a madman, of the best sort, it seems" she wondered, and took another big bite. When she swallowed it, she looks at him curiously. "If I may say, your gear looks brand-new, all very top of the line, Alpha-tailored what-have-you. This food is obviously top-shelf. You been planning this trip for a long time?"

He finished chewing, swallowed, nodded, and said, "I don't really know how long. As long as I was running the business, I guess. Maybe longer." He looked up at the big sky, which is a much deeper blue now. "I love it out here. I'd live in this area most of the summer if I could. I might even get a cabin up here." He tapped the spork thoughtfully on his dish as she took a slug of water from a bottle that had been clipped to the side of her backpack. "The startup wasn't ever my endgame, and I'm done with it. This," he said, gesturing around at the whole big world and very, very casually including her in the gesture, "was the endgame."

"You're really having startup-retirement, then?"  
  
He nodded.  
  
She shook her head. "I can only imagine. I _can't_ imagine." She looked a little sad. "That's the dream, isn't it? Either retire at 30-something or start whatever's exciting next. That seems so far away for me. All I can think of right now is getting the engine to perform. It's working better than I expected for this stage, but I can't finance the business on my own. I hope I'll win enough purses for my team's salaries for the first year or so, but no way will it pay for manufacturing, or, God, inventory. And I have no clue how to deal with venture capitalists."

He swallowed and waved his spork at her. "You're not going to be dealing with VCs," he says. "Not for the first few rounds of funding."

She blinked, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Angel investors. That's what people do for the first round of funding. Angels are slightly rich people, mostly ones who are part of investment clubs. Boulder's lousy with them. That's where you get your seed round and second two or three rounds, up to about ten million. You pitch to angels, usually at their club meetings. VCs are for your A and B rounds of funding, stuff over 10 mill."

"I guess I'd heard of angel investors, but I always thought they were people's wealthy granddads," she said. "They're in clubs, you say? And you just... tell them about your idea?"

He warmed to his subject immediately, and started telling her about the pitching process and absolutely anything else might keep her sitting beside his fire\--local investor clubs he knew about, startup incubators, anything that might help her. She asked surprisingly astute questions, lots of them about protecting her employees and IP once she got investors, and about how much of the company she'd have to give up in exchange for different kinds of funding. He asked her about where she was building her engine, and she told him about the Automotive Engineering program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she had her own machine lab as a grad student, and about the student team that had signed on to work on her engine and who now all wanted to work for the spinoff she was planning after graduation. Their chili was long eaten by the time the sweet scent of mountain evening began to touch the now-cooling air. He was telling her about how essential a really great formal business plan document was for the first round of funding, and she was still rapt.

 _Come on, little fishy,_ he suddenly thought, then _Stop that. She's a_ beta.

Still. She was obviously amazing, and he could save her so much time and heartache in getting her business off the runway.

"You know," he ventured, "when I get back to town I could show you my old business plans--the one I started out with that didn't get me anything, and then the ones that got me funded. Walk you through how to write a good one."

She responded to the chill in the air as he talked, zipping up her windbreaker, pulling her hair out of her ponytail to cover the back of her neck, then pulling her neck gaiter up over her hair and ears like a wide, fleecy headband. Suddenly, the mountain-evening smell in the air deepened and expanded, as if all the flowers had opened back up at once, and almost symphonic notes of female musk, silk sheets, and deep, wet kisses floated through the air.  
  
It was... _God..._ it was _delicious._ Ben came to full attention, and without thinking, swiveled his head to sniff out the source.  
  
_Fuck, it's getting stronger somehow, incredible, what_ is _that?  
  
_Turning his head, his big nose guided him like a compass needle to the scent's source. Rey. _Beta_ Rey.

She saw him suddenly staring at her, nostrils flared, and she looked up at the purpling of the sky. Her mouth dropped open and she leapt up like she'd been stabbed in the ass. She dropped the spoon and empty bowl on the ground so hard they clattered together, then picked them back up in a fluster and thrust them at him.  
  
"It's so late! I need to go!" she said, as he took the dishes from her in a daze. She looked genuinely panicked. "Thank you so much for all your help and for the bandages, and that was such great advice--" she babbled as she yanked her gaiter back down and started digging madly through her little backpack--"I really couldn't accept more help from you, you've already done so much--"  
  
She pulled out a headlamp and wrapped its band around her wrist, then hurriedly shouldered her way into the pack--"and besides I won't be ready for ages to get funding, I have finals and summer session and a big race coming up so training training training--"  
  
She pulled on her backpack, clicked all three torso straps locked, and started practically moonwalking away.

Ben was totally confused. What the _hell_ was happening? What had he done? And her scent, was she in _..._ Oh god, she was leaving, really leaving right this minute--

"Wait, Rey, wait just a second..." He dove into his tent, grabbed the pen out of his journal and without thinking ripped a blank page out of the middle of the book. By the time he got out, she was backed up right to the edge of the clearing, half turned from the knoll toward the trail, hand poised to click on the headlamp that was now on her head. He scribbled fiercely. "Here's my contact information. I'd... I'd be happy to mentor you in startup stuff, no strings attached. I have all the time in the world to do it and I'll be back in Boulder on the 16th. Really, I'd--"

She lifted her hand to reflexively accept the paper he thrust at her and he overshot a bit in the twilight, brushing the skin of her fingers and wrist. There was a feeling like she'd _zapped_ him with a hard electrical current that went up his arm, branched off to his brain and heart and ended with a pulse to his _cock._ The _fuck?_ Her pupils blew wide and her hand twitched back, curling around the paper into a fist.

"...love. To. Help?"

She stared at her hand in something like horror for a millisecond, then clicked on her headlamp so he couldn't even see her face under the blaze of light. She stepped onto the trail, already moving fast away from him.

"I couldn't...." she called back over her shoulder. "But thank you so much, you've done far too much already so it wouldn't be right, but it was so so great to talk with you Ben, I really appreciate it, you have no idea, have a great time out here, sleep well..." and her words were fading because she was already yards down the trail, turned away, fleeing into the twilight.

He watched her headlamp's light bob away down the trail, illuminating her path but not the woman herself.

Ben Solo suddenly knew two things. One, he would use whatever of his considerable resources were required to meet Rey again and help her however he could, and two, Rey--gorgeous, strong, fascinating Rey-- _was an unclaimed Omega._


	6. Fleeing, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey flees, but not far.

2019

Rey raced down the darkening trail as fast as she safely could, committing the least possible weight to her footfalls before instantly lifting them, so that nothing could slide out from under her as she landed on it.

_StupidstupidstupidSTUPID_

How could she endanger herself like that?! He'd _smelled_ her. She'd sat there with him for hours, letting it get darker and darker, hanging on the Alpha's words like some stupid, safe little kitten that wasn't going to get crushed by someone's bootheel if she got caught. She knew what the consequences were for being detected--it would be the end of everything, everything worthwhile and good. She had to be perfect, _perfect,_ just at this one thing, she'd made _a deal_ with herself, she could live, have a life, enjoy herself, but she had to be immaculate about controlling her scent. And she hadn't been, she'd just sat there letting it get late, then _uncovered her neck for him! What had she been thinking?!_

And what was that feeling, that electrical charge? Was that one more terrible Anassa thing? She shook hands with Alphas sometimes, bumped into them, even hugged a few, and it was never like that, but now this one Alpha makes her feel like her body's on fire with joy and that she should... what? _Drape_ it over him?! _Keep_ touching him?!

_THIS. WAS. BAD._

The trail flattened out some in the second mile down, and Rey pushed herself into a sprint. The world narrowed down her gasping lungs, the burning ache in her injured knees, the sting in her quads as lactic acid poured into her muscles, and the constant tiny corrections to her running form-- _tilt pelvis forward, lift knees, shoulders soft, swing feet_. She was badly outrunning her headlamp's light so she clicked it off, and then she was flying alone through the deepening twilight. When the trail became smoothed gravel, she pushed even harder, stretching out until her stride was so long it hurt, as if she was leaning into an invisible finish line. She hit the dirt parking lot within minutes and already had her key in her hand when she got to the Volvo.

She slammed herself into the car, gasping, and immediately locked the doors, just in case some other Alpha was sleeping in their own car with the windows down and smelled her. She started the Volvo and her heartbeat noticeably slowed with the soothing noise and vibration of the huge engine. She revved twice for good measure, then pulled out of the lot and headed for the road. She rarely speeded--the risk of hurting some child playing in the street was untenable to her--and when she did, it was almost always at night. Now she fed the Volvo gas like it was a hungry animal, and she was going 90 by the time she hit the first straightaway, and 120 on the long empty stretch by the closed ski resort. One of the very few non-drivetrain upgrades on the car was a state-of-the-art radar detector with a hypersonic wildlife repeller, so she just focused on the road and didn't worry about being caught. There was only the patch of road in the headlights ahead of her and the mechanics of controlling the car.

But now that she was safe, the soreness of her body caught up with her. The medical tape holding her gauze on was pulling uncomfortably on her skin, and underneath the gauze, she wasn't just scraped, she was badly bruised. She hadn't mentioned it to Ben, but she knew that she was going to be turning purple and green everywhere she'd landed. She shook her head to herself. _Ben._ What had she been _thinking?_

 _What WAS_ _I thinking?_

_That a big, sexy Alpha guy was nice to me, caring for me, feeding me, making me feel important, maybe saving my business from my million rookie mistakes? That he was looking at me like I was special? That he offered to help me, over and over._

_Stupid girl._

_He said 'no strings attached.'_

_Could that be real?_

_Could he possibly mean that?_

_Of_ course _not. I saw how he looked at me. Like a man looks at a woman who is not me._

_OK. But._

_NO. STUPID._

_But._

_NO._

_But..._

_But what if... I just met him for breakfast? Once. Or a couple of times? In public places. To let him tell me about business stuff? If he's really retired, he probably made tons of money on his exit. I couldn't let him invest, I couldn't let him get that close, but... maybe he'd introduce me to other investors. And... teach me how to talk to them. I know he would. Of course he would._

_That is NUTS,_ the better angel of her being asserted.

 _That could WORK,_ the more desperate part of her knew. She wanted her business to succeed, desperately. The engine... it was her baby. It could save the world billions of gallons of gas, billions of tons of pollution, and make her and her team enough money to live on, really live. Even if the business still failed, at least she'd have known, if she let him help her now, that it wasn't because, business-wise, she'd wasted all her resources reinventing the wheel after someone had offered her a free Ferrari.

 _I was careless around him, though. I'd probably become careless again. I have to be_ perfect.

 _And I'd be leading him on,_ she thought with some shame. _Knowing that he... wants something from me... and then not putting a stop to it, that's the same thing. It's wrong._

 _He's an adult._ _I_ wouldn't _lead him on, I wouldn't even know_ how _to lead him on, I'd just... let him feel whatever he feels. Like I feel whatever I feel all the time and then don't do anything about it. If he wants to help me with the business, then he still can, and if he doesn't, I won't let it go anywhere else, that's his choice._

 _You're NUTS_!

 _It could WORK_.

By the time Rey pulled up to her cabin, it was full dark. She hadn't come home this late for years, and seeing her house in the dark, shut up without her in it, was weird. The little building looked so lonely.

 _Perfect,_ she reminded herself. _You have to be PERFECT._

In that spirit, she turned off the car, left her headlights on for a moment, cranked her window down, and sniffed the air carefully before getting out. No wandering Alphas around. She completely gathered up her stuff before opening her door, though, then dashed for her front porch. She unlocked the electronic locks, got herself inside and bolted in, disarmed and then re-armed the beeping security system, flipped on the air filters, and checked the seals on her shutters before she even started to relax. Her body was ridiculously stiff from her injuries and from not stretching after her main run, so she laid on her yoga mat on the living room floor in her dirty clothes and just worked her way through her body, giving all the important stuff a deep, painful stretch, trying not to further aggravate her wounds. When she was done, she dragged herself into the tiny bathroom to take a shower. She was going to have to re-dress her wounds afterward, so she got all her supplies out and started the shower running. She stripped, and when she pulled off her sports bra, the piece of paper Ben had written his contact information on fluttered out. She'd stuffed it in there so she could run away without having to take her backpack off again. She picked up the paper and saw that her sweat has smeared and soaked away most of the ink, making his contact information illegible. Well, that was that, then.

Then she caught sight of her naked body in the mirror, and stopped dead. Written in reverse right over her heart, but reading perfectly when she looked in the mirror, was

Ben Solo

303.555.1212

Ben@BenSolo.com

She retrieved a pen and copied down his contact information from her own naked body, while staring at herself in the mirror.

_You're nuts._


	7. Two Perspectives

2019

In the dark after Rey fled from him, Ben found himself pacing around his camp in the moonlight. He could've turned on the little LED string in his tent or worn a headlamp, but somehow it seemed easier to think under the stars.

 _She had to have been in heat._ It must have come on her incredibly fast and freaked her out. That was why she'd run.

But she hadn't smelled like heat. Ben had been with plenty of Omegas in heat, with their brain-scrubbing siren-scent of mindless, endless fucking. In Rey's scent there'd been a note--a _delectable_ one--of sex, but it was more like her scent triggered in his brain the feeling of actually _having_ sex, the breathless, whole-body satisfaction of it. The satisfaction, he could only imagine, of _making love_ with a woman he was in love with, who was actually in love with him. The rest of her scent was just... what? A specific kind of perfection. Perfection for _him._ Mountain meadow sensuality and the vibe of expensive sheets, with delicious caresses and the love he'd looked for all his life. She smelled to him like a perfect home, a perfect home in the woods, all safety and freedom, and like adoration, like companionship forever. Like she'd been made for _him._

_But it was just a scent, right?_

He stalked around his fire ring, running his hands through his hair.

He'd liked her. She would've been impossible not to like. But this _feeling?_

Maybe he should go back early. Maybe he should go back first thing tomorrow and go to the university and find her and...

_You asshole stalker, stop that._

But, you know, he could break out his phone right now and climb South Arapahoe Peak, because on the mountaintop there's a slim chance of having phone coverage, so he could maybe Google her, she had to be all over Google if she was winning races, the wins are always posted....

_Seriously? In the middle of the night? Do you want to die before you see her again?_

He stopped walking and just stood in the rapidly cooling dark, panting like a bear, clenching and unclenching his fists.

_What the fuck is happening to me?_

He could admit to being affected by a beautiful young Omega, by a woman he felt he could have a real chance at a relationship with, if the circumstances were right. She was crush-worthy, certainly. But this was not normal thinking for him. He wanted to chase after her like an animal and carry her, bridal style, back to his tent. His distinctly non-spiritual brain was babbling at him that maybe he _knew_ he would meet her and that's why he'd bought his ridiculously enormous sleeping bag and tent and _two_ pillows, that it was _fate, goddammit, so go get your ma--._

_STOP IT._

Ben Solo had been alone for 31 years.

Ben Solo did not have a mate.

Ben Solo was full of secrets and lies and a past so heavy he'd barely staggered through life under the weight of it, and he was only now feeling free enough of it to think of mating because he was here in the anonymity of the woods and he'd become safely, if moderately, rich. Whatever happened next had to be done judiciously, so he didn't blow the next third of his life like he had the first.

He would like to meet Rey again. He would admit that. He liked her. She was attractive in many ways. But she wasn't... whatever his brain was telling him she was. She had a... puzzling scent. And he was not going to drive her away by being... demanding. So he'd have his vacation and then on the 16th, he'd do whatever came next.

He would.  
  
  
  


* * *

When Rey awakened, she was still in a half-miasma of some dream about molten metal, a nest shaped like a house that was filled with soft, feathery babies, and a long, slow dance under moonlight. With Ben.

_Ben._

_Oh. Right._

The taste of their conversation the night before--earnest, funny, turning more intriguing with every new idea\--was still in her head from the night before. She lay still in bed, fear in her heart.

She'd really let an Alpha catch her scent.

That hadn't happened in so long, not since the very last time she'd let herself be reckless. She'd been 19, driving the Volvo through Kansas on the way back from a race outside of Chicago. She'd smashed the course record, had a $15,000 check in her purse, and her new gold belt buckle had been digging a little into her belly from its place on her jeans.

She'd snapped the finish line tape around 2 a.m. and figured that was good enough for her workout for the day. Then, in the car, it had been nearly midnight and the August air had been so hot and humid and disgusting that, with no air conditioning in the car and nothing but deserted fields around her, she'd rolled her window down and let her hair blow back in the moonlight, for once, for _once._ She'd cranked Florence & the Machine on the stereo she'd jiggered into the little slot on the dashboard that had once held a broken 8-track player, and not thought to change a fucking thing when she pulled up to the stoplight on the outskirts of Topeka. She'd been tapping the beat on her window frame and steering wheel, singing _" The dog days are over/ The dog days are done/ The horses are coming so you better run!"_ when a car so low and gorgeous that it took her a second to recognize it as not a spacecraft but a white Maserati pulled up on her right. She couldn't help but gape. God, it was stunning, lines as beautiful as any object's on earth, brand new, a rolling wonder of postmodern Italian design. The rumble of its engine, unlike hers, was unbuffered by a stealth muffler, and it was like low thunder next to her. The driver's tinted window immediately rolled down, and there in the dark, a cut-jawed, blond Alpha male, maybe 40, was staring at her. He was wearing a tight, white T-shirt cut low enough to show his bulging pecs, where a gold necklace gleamed over his tan. He grinned at her, leaned out his window, and overtly huffed her scent.

  
  
  
  
  
Something came over him.  
  
  
  
  


 _She shouldn't_ have _a scent.  
  
  
_

_  
  
Oh no._

_  
  
_

His face had gone from cocky to astounded, and then when he saw her face sag with fear, to desperate. He'd jumped out of his car as she leaped across the seats to slam her passenger door lock down, and then as he pounded on her roof, she'd stomped the gas so hard her tires just screamed and smoked on the asphalt, going nowhere. He rammed a fist into her passenger door glass, and thank fuck it held, and then her tires caught and she was roaring away. With practically any other car behind her, she would have been safe then, safe in flight, but that fucking Maserati wasn't just for looks. He'd leapt back into his car, had it rolling before his door was shut all the way, and he was after her. His fuel-injected engine's ability to accelerate was so much greater than hers that he caught up with her in seconds, and then he was driving next to her, crowding her from the left, shouting something at her through his open passenger window.

 _"Omega! Omega!"_ it sounded like.

She'd ignored him, kept the Volvo floored, and just waited for the disparities in their engine displacement, which she desperately hoped existed, to finally catch up. He'd pulled ahead of her then, turned on his blinker as they approached a rest stop exit, as if that would get her to follow him, slowed down to block her attempt to pass him, and then swerved away when she purposely rammed just the left tip of his rear bumper, enough to scare him and dent that bit of his precious fucking car. He'd braked in startlement again and she'd stuffed all 440 cubic centimeters of the Volvo's engine back down into third gear and laid on the gas again. The Volvo bellowed like a beast under her feet and her rear tires squealed on the road as she raced ahead. She rammed the shifter back up to fourth, and her speedometer crept up to 120, 130, 140, with the Maserati right on her tail, then fucking back beside her.  
  
The Alpha was waving one arm at her through his window, screaming now, _"STOP, you have to STOP!"  
  
_ When she hit 145, he started to fall back, this time unable to keep up, and in seeming desperation, he nudged her fender. At that speed, it nearly threw her off the road, a road she could barely see in the long beam of her headlights. She wrestled the wheel with desperate strength, foot off the accelerator, barely keeping the Volvo from rolling over as it rocked under her hands.

In her rearview she could see him mouthing, " _I'm sorry I'm sorry please stop please!"_ behind her, and she stood on the gas again.  
  
He pulled beside her one more time, and finally did what she'd known he would do. He dropped his voice, put all his Alpha energy inside it, and bellowed " _STOP"_ through her open driver's window in an obvious Alpha command. But Rey, she was ready for that. She _snarled_ at him through the window frame, teeth bared, hardly feeling the urge to pump the brakes, and then didn't look away from the road until she glanced at her speedometer, which was touching 150, and then he was behind her, nothing but a terrifying glare of headlights. She kept roaring onward, and in the endless, empty Kansas cornfields, she took it to 160, 170, 180, until the Alpha was far, far behind her and there was only moonlight and empty road ahead.

She didn't pull off until her gas tank was nearly empty, 100 miles later, and then she dodged away from the highway, taking a long, meandering path back to Boulder, just in case.

That had been the last time. The last time she'd gotten careless.

But this time, she reminded herself, no one had chased her.

Ben had offered his phone number, not tried to run her off the road.

She rolled over in bed and groaned into her pillows.

He'd been so _nice._ And unlike that scary, model-pretty predator, Ben was... what, offering to help her? Clearly because he wanted to see her again, but not because he thought he was entitled to. He'd been offering, not demanding. She'd read that in his scent, in every line of his confused, concerned face before she'd left. That curious face of his, all asymmetrical and stitched together wrong, but somehow so sensual and unbelievably expressive. It was like she'd been able to see every emotion he had--his passion in the way he leaned through the air and talked with his hands, excitement in the way his whole face lit up when he'd talked about solar energy, his completely endearing awkwardness when he'd edged around something that he wasn't quite saying. It felt safe to her, to be able to see him so clearly, even knowing somehow that he had a lot more going on under the surface than he was sharing. Like the thing about why he got into solar entrepreneurship. There was obviously more to it than, "I wanted to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels." That passion, that obviousness, it made her want to creep close and then stay near, like a baby animal next to warmth. 

And it hadn't been just his personality. She had to admit that to herself. He looked... touchable--that silky hair, the full lips, the big Caravaggio eyes. And his body--he was an Alpha's Alpha. So tall and broad he could block out sunlight, torso a thick wedge of muscle, legs for days and an ass... Beta Jesus, he had a nice ass. Walking up the trail behind him from the stream had been embarrassing, she'd been staring so hard at it. His scent was remarkable, too. Under the nose-tickling tang of his bug spray, his scent was muskier than the usual Alpha's, more head-turning in that cunt-clenching primal way, but also cleaner and brighter, like the deep notes were deeper and the high notes more complex. It made her (silently, absolutely silently) sniff him while he was ladling out her food. She'd moaned about how great the chili had smelled, but really, as much as the food, she'd been giving herself the ridiculous treat of talking about _him._

Her clit felt a little pinched all of a sudden, a little tingly and hot. She pressed her palm to herself without thinking, feeling the unexpected warmth of arousal under her hand. She ground experimentally against herself, enjoying the bit of pleasure it squeezed out. She thought about laying back and spreading herself out, diving in with fingers and her knot vibrator, and reached for her nightstand.

And there was her thermometer, where she kept it just in case she started to feel potential heat symptoms. _Fuck._ That was an arousal killer. She took it out of its case, popped the sensor under her tongue, and waited. It was the best money could buy, the kind rich Betas used to do fertility planning.

98.3. Perfect, since she usually ran a little cool.

She wiped the thermometer off and returned it to its spot, then stared at her ceiling. It didn't seem to give up any answers as to what she should do.

_You're stupid and endangering yourself._

_He wasn't demanding, and he could make my business actually_ work.

She didn't want to think about it anymore.

She thought about it all day.


	8. What You Need to Know About Rey and Finn, Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends, I know you're mostly here for the ship, not endless backstory, so I've started to combine chapters to move the plot along a bit faster. This chapter, as it says, is about Rey and Finn, but the next one will bring you back to Ben and the LURV. Stay tuned for more this Sunday!

2008

The year Rey was 11, she dragged herself wherever she went. She barely ate. She walked slowly, didn't run, until she was late for school five times in a row and the school called Unkar about it, who punched her in the back and yelled that she'd get to school on time or not go at all. So she ran, at a listless trot. She rarely did her laundry, neglected to wash herself in the junkyard office sink often enough, and got mocked even more ferociously by the other girls. She got Cs on her schoolwork instead of straight As. Her teacher, Mr. Palzer, tried to talk with her, over and over, sat her down with the school counselor, even, and Rey denied that anything was wrong and said she'd do better. She didn't.

It was because she knew that _it_ could happen any second now. Girls presented at 12 or 13, usually, but some of the big, healthy girls in her class were already presenting at 11. It could happen at any time, and when it did, her dreams of being an inventor, of going not even to college but just high school, of traveling the world, of adventure, of _escape_ would be gone forever. They'd lock her up and throw away the key until some rich old man bought her from Unkar and made her into a grinning S-E-X robot who lived only to make babies upon babies upon babies.

But she didn't present. She went for months, obsessively tracking any happy urges--was that an urge to nest? An urge to cuddle? _Was this it?  
  
_But it wasn't.  
  
And that was almost worse, because this horrible waiting now just went on, and on, and on. She wanted it to be over, got tired of waiting under the sword, knowing it was always on the verge of falling.

School ended for the summer. Everyone at Unkar's earned their keep, so she had to work in the junkyard morning and evening, climbing under and through wrecked machinery in the hours outside the most scalding heat. And there was no end to the work. The oilfield workers who populated most of Jakku made pretty great money, but they were also pretty great at drinking or snorting it up and then smashing their cars and doing stupid things to their appliances. There was no rust in the desert, so pretty much any machine, wheeled or not, that made its way into Unkar's junkyard could be in some way used again, and eventually would be, since something similar would inevitably be wrecked or prematurely worn out and needed to be repaired with cheap parts.

Rey went about wrenching bits out of machines as Unkar demanded so that he'd continue to buy her peanut butter and bread and cereal, canned tuna, and the rare, generic candy bar. She accepted this sustenance but lived mostly on the bitter tea in the junkyard waiting room. Her arms were getting stronger, though, from handling the tools, and Unkar took her listless obedience for calm and trustworthiness. The old drunk told Pete, a fellow English day-school boy gone badly to seed who had worked at Unkar's for a decade, that he had to teach her metalwork so she wouldn't just laze around during the hot part of the day. That put an end to any possibility of making money through babysitting and such, not that she would ever babysit again, until it became all she'd do for the rest of her life. Pete was a junkie, but when he was just the right amount of high, the heroine made him slow, patient, and calm. He suited Rey up in a leather apron that went down to her feet and gloves that went to her elbows, plus a full face mask that was so big she had to put a folded up bandanna under its band to keep it from falling into her eyes. In the hottest part of the day, Pete taught her first to use the cutting torch, whose super-hot spike of fire could slowly slash a line through solid steel, or would burn off her fingers and toes if she dropped it in a moment of carelessness.

It was terrifying.

The torch roared and stank of burnt metal and poisonous gases, and the flame itself required that she give it her absolute and utmost concentration, that she could never glance away from it for even a microsecond as she worked. The torch held her in a relentless grip, and its fire in her face was the fire in the condemned shack, the cuts she made were ugly as her sin, horrible bubbled scars on the metal. Every cut she made looked like her hideous, scarred insides, where all the hope and joy she'd cut out of herself was the more obvious for their absence. By the end of June, when the heat went above 115 degrees every day, she was working inside the air-conditioned shop between 10 and 6, scavenging in the cooler hours and using the torch to separate stuck parts and cut openings into the crumpled shells of stubborn machines. 

When she was out of work to do for more than an hour, Pete moved on to teaching her proper welding, joining two things together with flame and a rod of matching metal. If you heated two objects to the right temperature, then forced the flame to a blue-white dagger, two could join into one. At first, her welds were as ugly as her cuts, and weak--practice scraps thrown to the ground by Unkar broke apart like cheap toys. Those earned her a slap and a day of waiting for her groceries. To avoid the slap, Rey practiced stolidly, constantly, even sneaking in at night to spark the torch to life and melt pairs of ugly things together, following the exercises in a Welder's Union study guide Pete left for her. Even deeply depressed, Rey was a quick study, steady-handed and methodical. A day came when her welds were as strong as the original metal, and with a bit of polishing on the wheel grinder, as good as invisible.

Those perfect welds, polished and bright, brought Rey some small happiness. Since she'd mastered those basics, Pete took it on himself to teach her to use more tools--the angle grinders, the drill press, the metal brake, the bender, the lathe, and even the terrible, spinning saws that would take her whole hand off if she wasn't meticulously careful. By the end of the summer, she was finally allowed to use the milling machine, the most expensive tool in the shop, which could draw all kinds of cutout shapes in sheets and blocks of metal with its spinning bit. Unkar started regularly giving her little parts to replicate or repair, never praising her, but grunting with acceptance when he snatched the finished products from her outstretched hands. Rey found that taking things apart wasn't bad, but when she could make something new--machine an aluminum gasket from a piece of sheet metal, reconnect a gear to its shaft so perfectly it was as if it had never broken, that felt a little... good. By the time early August rolled around, Rey was less destroyed. She was still waiting, still felt invisible inside the horrible cloak of her secrets, but she'd spent most of the summer making things whole. That had to count for something, didn't it?

Her first week at middle school started in mid-August, when temperatures still reached 110 degrees. In the mornings she'd put one of her "new" thrift-store outfits, bought with scrounged change from every car brought in over the summer, into her backpack and then run to school in time for the gym's opening at 6. She'd take a shower and tie her hair into its three little buns well before the first bell rang, then do whatever homework she had left from the night before.

She spoke to almost no one and rarely spoke in class. 

Until the new kid arrived.

It was September 10th, a weird time to start a new school, but there he was, sitting in what had been the empty seat next to hers in Ms. Sloane's first-period Algebra class. The boy was dark, dark brown, with a lopsided, fluffy afro, and he was just as skinny and raggedy as Rey. While Rey slumped at her desk, though, the new boy held a sort of military bearing and a look of fierce attention on the teacher. When he saw Rey looking him over, though, he leaned up his textbook so that it was standing on the desk, and then slowly, slowly ducked behind it until he briefly broke his hawklike attention on the teacher to smile tentatively at Rey from behind the book. That smile was so full of light and softness that Rey couldn't help but find the energy to smile back. He laid the book down and popped right back up to attention again as soon as she smiled back, but Rey knew he was glad.

At the end of class, the bell rang, and the boy remained sitting with that same military bearing, stick-straight at his desk. He continued staring at Ms. Sloane's back as she cleaned the whiteboard, not even moving as the rest of the kids scattered. The teacher gathered her things and left as well, and Rey was about to walk out when she noticed the panicked look on the boy's face.

She paused in the door. "Are you OK? It's time to go."

He looked at her, and looked around as if afraid he was going to get caught doing whatever he was about to do. He pressed his lips together, leaned over his clasped hands at her, and seemed to steel himself to speak. He whispered, "Is he late? The Alpha?"

Rey's brow furrowed. "What Alpha?"

The boy shrugged an _I don't know?_ "Whichever Alpha dismisses class." 

_Huh?_

"There is no Alpha that dismisses class," she replied. "We go when the bell rings. Or when theteacher says."

The boy looked at her like she'd just grown a third eye. "That teacher was a _Beta._ How can a Beta dismiss class?"

Rey was indignant. "A Beta can do whatever she wants!"

The boy just stared at her.

She amended, "A Beta who's a teacher can. It doesn't matter if she's a Beta, or an Omega, or whatever. Teachers can tell us to go because they're _the teachers._ "

The boy was just sitting there like he was frozen, like whatever she'd just said had broke his brain and it hurt. The warning bell for next period rang. She said, "Look, I have to go, and so do you. You can't just sit in here. There's no teacher here second period. You have to go to your next class."

Something _weird_ was happening to him. The whites of his eyes were showing and there were _tears_ in them. He was clenching his hands together on the desk so hard that his knuckles stood out.  
  
"They're tricking you," he whispered, "Please don't go! _Please._ They'll take you to the shed if you don't wait for the Alpha. All those other kids are gonna go to the _shed._ Just _wait."_

It dawned on Rey that this new kid, with his sweet smile, was either Loony-Tunes-bonker-bonkers, or he had a really, really good reason to be afraid.

Inspiration dawned on her and she said, "Hold on, just stay there..." as if that wasn't what he was going to do anyway--and she ran into the hallway.

Oh, _perfect!_

"Mario!" Rey yelled. The big, tattooed janitor who always opened the gym first thing in the morning was emptying the trash by the computer lab. He looked up at her, startled. "What-up, ReyRey?"

"Please, please come here! We've got a problem."  
  
Mario jogged right over, brow furrowed.

She panted, "There's a new kid here and he came from some weird place where you get in bad bad trouble if you leave class before an Alpha guy says to go. So will you tell him to go to his next class and then just go when everyone else goes?"

Mario, who was always super nice to her but also huge, looked _mad._ His mustache rippled across his face like a black caterpillar as his upper lip pulled back. _"_ Yeah, I heard about those places. Show me the kid."

Rey ran back to the classroom as the bell rang. Now _she's_ going to be late. Crappola.

The boy was still sitting there and looked both relieved and scared when Mario followed Rey through the door. Under his faded sweatshirt, the kid's posture was rigid. He held his gaze and folded hands front and center. He didn't blink or swallow or even seem to breathe.

Mario lowered his tall self down on one knee next to the desk so he was in the kid's unmoving line of sight, and said gently, "Hey, amigo. Look at me."

The boy's eyes instantly swiveled to him.

"You see what I am?" Mario asked.

"Yes, Alpha."

"Right, I'm an Alpha. And my name's Mario. It's good to meet you."

The boy's eyes got very wide again and he didn't reply. Mario stuck out his hand to shake. The kid apparently thought Mario's hand was a big snake, because he somehow leaned as far away from it as possible while not moving a muscle.

"OK," Mario said, patient like he was talking to a kindergartner. "Please tell me your name and shake my hand."

"I am Beta number FN-2187, SIR!" The kid stuck out the wrong hand to shake, so Mario just folded it into his big fist and slowly pumped it up and down with a knowing look.

"The people you live with now, they tell you to use some other name?" he asked.

"SIR, no SIR!" the boy barked. "Temporary placements do not receive new names," he said, obviously reciting something a grownup had told him.

Mario shook his head. "That is some bullshit right there, mijo."  
  
The boy's eyes got huge. Mario continued, "People have names out here. FN, huh? For today, let's call you Finn. That's a good name. It was my grandpa's name. So, Finn, the rest of the time you're in school, any school, from now until forever, you can leave class when the bell rings, unless the teacher or whatever grownup in charge tells you different. You don't have to wait for no Alphas. You got that?"

The boy seemed to chew on the new ideas, wonderingly, and slowly said, "Finn. Now until forever..." 

"You like that name OK?" Mario asked.

The boy nodded rapidly.

"OK, Finn, I'm gonna write ReyRey here a note for her next class, and then you and me are gonna walk to the school nurse's office together and get some stuff sorted out. You ain't in no trouble--we just gotta have a little talk about what's different here from your last place. That OK with you?"

The boy nodded rapidly again, but didn't get up.

"Get your backpack, mijo, and come with me." Mario pulled a pink notepad and pen out of his coveralls pocket, wrote a few sentences, and handed the pass slip to Rey. He told her, "Chica, you did good. What period you got lunch?"

"Fourth," she said. "And study hall after."

"Awesome." He glanced between the two of them, and said, "Finn, I'm gonna make sure you and ReyRey have lunch together from now on. That OK with you two?"

They both nodded this time, and smiled carefully at each other and Mario. As Rey ran down the hall toward her next class, she turned around and saw Mario leaving with Finn in the opposite direction, Mario's long, long arm draped over Finn's shoulders like a shawl.

She and Finn had lunch together almost every day for the next six years.

* * *

On that first day, Rey nervously entered the cafeteria for lunch, and there was Finn, standing just inside the door, carefully out of the flow of traffic, looking antsily around and clearly waiting for her. He was still clutching his last class's textbook, probably to give him something to do with his hands. She walked up to him right away, and said, "Hey."

"Hey." He swallowed and looked past her shoulder. "So, uh, thanks for helping me this morning. I didn't know about... pretty much anything."

There was no sense in lying to him. "I could tell." She motioned to the red, free-hot-lunch ticket in his hand with her own ticket, and said, "Let's get food."

He followed her into the lunch line and asked, "Hey, are you English?"

Rey shrugged. "Mom was. My foster father is and the guys I work with are. My last school had a bunch of British kids, so I just talk how I'm used to doing it."

Finn somehow latched onto the least obvious, most dangerous thing. "Guys you _work_ with? You work, like, a job? I thought kids don't have jobs out here."

Rey realized she'd better turn the question. She _knew_ kids weren't allowed to have jobs, and she didn't want to get taken away from Unkar's place to somewhere even worse. "You said, 'out here.' Where were you before? Where was 'in there?'"

Finn said, "I was in the First Order."

"What's that?"

He looked at her strangely. _"The. First. Order,"_ he repeated, pronouncing each word carefully, as if she must not have heard him.

"What. Is. It?" she asked in the same tone.

"Are you kidding me?"

She shook her head, thinking that the only news she heard was on the radio in the junkyard garage, but still.... She said, "Maybe I missed hearing about it. Is it famous?"

Finn looked like she just asked if the President was famous. "Of _course_ it is, it's..." He trailed off. He started getting a brow-furrowed, wide-eyed look, and then gazed up at the high ceiling as if something was being spelled out to him up there. "Uhhhh... oh _man._ Wow... that's... that's _another_ thing, I guess." He'd obviously just figured out something huge. He said in a rush, "So I was just in history class and it was so weird because the teacher, who is an _Omega,_ which is _crazy,_ didn't say anything about the First Order. Not the whole class. And I looked all through the book," and he held up his World History textbook, "and _it_ doesn't say squat about the First Order either."

Rey had no idea why he was so excited. "So?"

"So they were LYING!" Finn yelled, and suddenly the whole lunch line and all the cafeteria ladies turned and stared at them like giant owls.

Rey fiercely glared them down and they went back to whatever they were doing. Rey noticed she was feeling kind of... better.

Finn whisper-shouted, "They were _lying!_ My teachers and the Supreme Leader, and all the Alphas were lying about _everything!_ I freakin' _knew it!_ Man, if I hadn't had math class this morning I'da bet they were lying about math, too."

Rey had no idea what he was talking about, but this, this commiseration about a-hole adults, was delicious. "Adults _suck,"_ she said as they shuffled forward in the queue.

Finn nodded hard, mouth in a line. "Except Mario. And Nurse Jan, maybe. She's alright."

"Yeah, OK, there's a _few_ good ones. But what _is_ the First Order?"

He looked around as if realizing that not one person in the cafeteria would know what he was talking about. "It's the place I came from. People call it the righteous fatherland. It's like a town, sort of, but inside fences. Walls, actually. Walls with broken glass and barbed wire on top."

"Like _jail?_ The whole town?"

He thought for a moment while they picked up their brown plastic trays. "Well, the fields are outside. But yeah, the rest of it. And I guess it's not the town that's the First Order, because there are people outside the town who are still part of it. It's an _organization."_ He seemed proud to have puzzled that out.

Rey's gut twisted. She slid her tray along the metal rails to the lunch lady, but she felt again like she had all year, as if eating the big rectangular piece of cheese pizza Jolene slipped onto her tray might not be worth it. "Like, religious? Is it a cult?"

Rey was not 100% sure what a cult was, but she knew that cults were really, really interested in Anassas.

"No, no... well, maybe," Finn said. He was clearly working this out as he went along. "I don't know. We-- _they_ talk about God a lot. All the time, kind of. And natural laws, how God wants all the designations to hold their place. To labor joyfully in our places and be God's bulwark in a holy army."

"Yeah, that's a cult," Rey said flatly. But Finn left.... "So why aren't you there, being... holy or whatever?"

Finn looked away. "Because I escaped," he muttered, and looked down as Rey lead him toward an empty table.

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I hated it," he said, and slid onto the bench. "And they told me I was going to have to beat up a little kid."

"Whaaaat?" Rey breathed, feeling her heart freeze up in her chest.

"I was supposed to punish a little kid, because that's what they make Betas do. They make us punish our own. We're borne by Omegas, commanded by Alphas, and we punish our own. It's our right. But I wouldn't do it. So I had to run, or they were gonna to take me to the shed."

 _Holy crow._ "The shed where you thought they were gonna take you this morning," she said. 

Finn looked embarrassed. "Yeah. It's for reconditioning, if you're out of step in your marching for... if you're not obeying right. But Mario said that people would go to jail out here for making a kid hurt another kid like that. He said grownups don't get to hit kids, and they can't lock them up in a little room with.... whatever happens in reconditioning. Bad things. Man, I have so many questions, now. Like, how do people get kids to behave if they don't hit? Just really mean threats?"

"I wouldn't know," Rey said, without thinking.

Finn looked at her with the kind of clarity Rey did not like having applied to herself.

"I mean, I don't have kids. Obviously," she said, as cool as possible.

"...Obviously."

* * *

Finn, it turned out, was pretty good at math, and totally clueless at everything else except PE. They both had study period after lunch, and he and Rey talked all period in the library, pretending they had a project by passing stuff back and forth to each other and pointing at textbooks while they actually talked about Finn's old life. He said that in the First Order school, Betas only went to school half days and worked the other half. Finn had mopped floors and trained to be in the militia, which he said was something for "defending their sovereign state and preparing for the Grand Plan."

In the school, they hadn't had books, just worksheets and pamphlets that the First Order printed. Most of them were about history and their founders and inspirations. Hitler and Vader were big heroes, and Finn said he'd known that that was just wrong, really wrong, because no matter how you figure it, trying to kill all of one kind of people is messed up.

Finn also _hated_ Alphas. They were the _worst,_ he said. Betas who weren't in the militia could do some things--work in the fields and do yard work, teach kids from the pamphlets, cook and clean, do laundry, fix things--but Alphas were in charge of how they did it, when they did it, and deciding if they were doing it wrong and what the punishment would be if they were. And they were all assholes, every single one of them. They _liked_ watching Betas be punished and lording over them that they were in charge. They were the only ones who got to drive, read regular books, use the computers, use telephones, leave to go to college, work outside the compound, or consort with the Omegas.

Sounding just the right amount of casual, Rey asked, "So, what about the Omegas? What do they do?"

Finn shook his head. "Nobody sees them very much. They're the mothers, right? I know that when they're babies they stay with the moms, like the Alpha boys, and they get matched to a worthy Alpha as soon as they present. The Supreme Leader decides who marries who, mostly."

Rey was chilled, and furious. "That's _evil._ They get married when they're like 11? And to someone they don't pick? How can you be married when you're 11? If they tried to... _do it,_ they'd get _hurt_."

Finn wrinkled his forehead and might've been blushing a little. "I think they don't... you know, _do_ anything until they get married. That's when they have their first heat, when they're 16 or something? Like the legal age? But I know their matched Alphas scent them so no other Alpha will touch them. The Alpha guys are always talking about when they're gonna get to... do it... with their mate." He looked at Rey, troubled. "Do you think Mario would do that? Talk like that?"

She whispered, "No. Definitely not ever, _no._ Mario is good. And he doesn't even have to be. He could just ignore people or be a jerk, but he's cool." Rey pondered something. "How do they know what kids' designation is before they present? Like, how do they even know you're a Beta? People don't decide that for sure until boys are like, 17, right?"

"Not know? What do you mean not...." He rolled his eyes at himself. "I gotta stop asking that. Babies get the test. When they're born."

"Like a DNA test." It's not a question.

"Dunno. They take some blood or something and a couple of weeks later, they announce it."

 _Or spit,_ Rey thought, but could not say. _Sometimes it's the spit._

"Then the Betas go to the conditioning school and the Alphas boys and Omega girls stay with the moms for a while."

"They just take the Beta babies away from their moms? That is... so messed up." Rey felt her eyes tearing up. She knew exactly how cruel that was. "I can't believe anybody would be that horrible. That's the worst ever." She looked at Finn in horror. "Oh my god. Is that what happened to you?"

Finn just nodded once, and said, "Adults _suck balls._ "

"Did... did you know who your parents were?" And then she added in a rush, "Because I only sort of know who mine were."

Finn nodded stonily. "I think I know who my dad was. There was only one black Alpha there. He was kind of crazy, and like the biggest asshole of all the assholes except for the three who were in charge, who were the asshole kings. I saw three different black Omegas, so it could have been any of them. They never talked to me. They never even looked at me."

Rey was not a toucher. Rey had probably never been touched kindly more than a handful of times in her life. But she'd seen people do this, and so she tried it. She scooched her chair a few inches across the library linoleum toward his, leaned over, and put an arm around him. It felt awkward and uncomfortable, because Finn was slightly taller than she was, and she didn't know what to do with her hand, but she just held her arm there, and then thought to squeeze.


	9. Ben Tried. He Really Did.

2019  
  


Ben had 14 days to be in the woods, days he'd looked forward to for _years._

He worked studiously to enjoy them. He _wanted_ to enjoy them. He tried. He really did.

He bagged peaks, hiking for hours from wildflower fields up through fragrant spruce forests, onto blustery, naked-stone trails above treeline, gasping for breath as the atmosphere got thinner and the view more overwhelmingly beautiful, to stand, shrunken and alive, within horizons so vast they nearly curved. He apologized to his poor balls for the freezing-off they were about to receive and then threw himself into glacial lakes, whooping and gasping above the lung-clenchingly cold black water, swimming out to touch the blue-white floating ice, then sprinting back to shore with enormous splashes of his winglike arms and huge, churning feet. He read all six of the paperbacks he'd brought with him, flipping pleasant-smelling pages under trees or on itchy grass, or as he laid back on boulders, hat low over his eyes. He sketched, pencil whispering and shushing over the paper, and it was mostly things of things that were distinctly not Rey Niima. Mostly.

But his neck was always tired from craning it up at the mountainside, to see if a familiar red windbreaker was flying along the trail. In the evenings and when he hiked through the knee-deep blossoms of the valleys, he was constantly looking around him when he thought he might've caught her scent. When he saw tiny, flowerlike rainbow trout fry in the stream, he imagined telling showing them to her. When he saw some particularly cute kids pretending to be bear cubs, he thought about how she'd run in place for the kids on the mountainside, the ones who didn't look back when she fell. He wondered if she wanted children, if she _wanted_ to be mated at all. She was an Omega, she _must,_ right?

Nine days later, when Ben left the mountain for town, he felt more at peace than he deserved, but still restless, jumpy. It was his imagination, with its new, astonishingly persistent thoughts of _her_ that had finally driven him out of the woods.

_She'll find someone else while I'm gone._

_She's already involved with someone else._

_She'll move back to England while I'm gone._

_She'll find a large, polyamorous relationship to join and won't want me to join with her. While I'm gone._

_She'll get attacked by a mountain lion on a trail and get horribly injured because I'm not there to protect her._

_She'll get attacked by a mountain_ man _on a trail because I'm not there to protect her, and if she's alive we still won't be together because I'll be in prison for killing the mountain man._

_She'd never date someone who thinks he's supposed to protect her because she'll think that's just misogynistic Essentialist bullshit._

_She won't date a non-runner._

_She won't date_ me _, because I look like a bulky stork with radar-dish ears and a weak chin._

_She won't date me because I'm elderly compared to her and she doesn't want to date an old man and she actually likes younger men, she ran away from you, didn't you notice that, Stork Boy?_

_She's asexual or a strangely unconvincing lesbian and has no interest in me._

_She'll find out what I am and who I am and where I come from and she'll despise me forever._

The list went on.

* * *

1994

Solo was 7 years old. He was in the other-Alpha-stinking noisiness of the Academy's hall on the way to class, and despite having to dodge book bags in the face and Chris Thomas's big stupid fist, that day was going to be a little-bit-OK. Maybe not a good day, but not the worst, because it was his day to be class leader again. He'd earned it, because he'd gotten the most gold stars again on the big chart where Mr. Cooper tracked grades for Math, Reading, History, Science, Handwriting, and Citizenship. He'd been class leader for almost the whole month, the most of anybody ever, because he always got the most stars by a lot for Math, Reading, History, Science, and Handwriting. He had not very many stars for Citizenship.

Being class leader meant choosing the morning song (he liked "Free to Be You and Me" best), collecting the scissors and glues from everyone after crafts, and counting people in line as they came in from recess.

Solo had thought of some other responsibilities he'd like to have. He was going to ask Mr. Cooper today if he could be in charge of the seating chart, so he could move McKayla away from the table with Michael B., Robbie, and Curtis. They kept picking up the table and moving it when she was working so her worksheets got messed up. She was very tiny and couldn't move the table back at them, and that wasn't fair. He would also move Jessica and Chrystal to the table at the front, because they wore glasses and were also very small, so they could see better. He didn't care where he sat because no one was his friend, but maybe he could be at the same table as McKayla, Jessica, and Chrystal.

He was also going to ask Mr. Cooper if he could be in charge of choosing snacks. Mr. Cooper served them cheese with Cheezits sometimes, which was not a good combination. Solo knew better than to double up cheese, and he had drawn up a snack menu for the rest of the year, which was how long he intended to remain class leader.

When he got to the classroom, he strode to his seat with a sense of calm resolve. He might not have _liked_ things here but at least he could improve them. It was really his _job_ to improve things. Ben was for sure an Alpha, which Headmaster Uncle Luke said not to tell anyone about knowing, but The Bad Thing he had done was an Alpha command, so it must've been true. The Bad Thing was a _wrong_ Alpha command, a selfish Alpha command, but now he was being the right kind of Alpha, like Mama, who led people and improved things. Like his secret friend had said in the pretty red card that had come when Ben became class leader for the second week in a row, "You are the right person to be in charge. Alphas know how to take care of other people."

If he showed that he could keep being the right kind of Alpha, Mama and Daddy would let him come home, wouldn't they?

He missed Mama and Daddy so much he felt sick.

When the bell ring, Mr. Cooper came to the front of the classroom. This was when he wrote the word of the day on the corner of the whiteboard, said "Good morning, class," and told the news. Then, Solo would stand at the front of the room, tall and having good posture in front of everyone, and tell which song to sing and _lead_ the song while people watched him do it.

Mr. Cooper seemed a little... weird this morning. He looked nervously at Solo for a split second before writing the word of the day on the board. The word of the day was "Citizenship." That was super weird, because everyone knew what citizenship was already. Mr. Cooper said, "Good morning, class."

"Good morning, Mr. Cooper," they chorused, Ben enunciating perfectly.

"We have lots of news this morning," Mr. Cooper said. "The first news is that we have a new star chart, and a new way to earn the privilege of being class leader."

Ben looked where Mr. Cooper was pointing, and most of the star chart was just _gone._ Like someone had cut away _five rows,_ Math, Reading, History, Science, and Handwriting, with a pair of scissors, leaving only the title and Citizenship. Ben's stars, the ones that showed all the things he was good at, the _best_ at, were gone. Ben felt himself getting hot, and cold, and this was _wrong_ , this was _mean._

Mr. Cooper glanced at Solo again, and Solo suddenly knew that _Mr. Cooper_ knew it was wrong and mean, and _he'd done it anyway,_ he'd done it to Solo _on purpose._

Mr. Cooper said, "Our school has decided that citizenship is the most important quality of leadership. That means that in all classes, the class leader for the day will now be the student who has the best citizenship scores. So today, that student will be Heather K."

Solo's stomach and heart clenched and he was drenched in anxiety. Solo wouldn't be the leader anymore. He wouldn't be able to show that he was a good Alpha, and he wouldn't be able to help the little kids or anyone else. _Heather K._ would be the leader, and Heather K. _smirked_ at Ben whenever he messed up. Heather K. shouldn't be the leader of _anything._ She would mess everything up and make things worse and Ben would have to endure it and he wouldn't be able to go home, Mama and Daddy still wouldn't _want_ him, he couldn't go _home why can't he go HOME?!?!_

Suddenly the room was very loud and screaming and Ben's table was tipped over and everyone was jumping back from him and yelling and maybe some of that yelling was Ben, and Mr. Cooper had Ben in a mean, hard grip and was _shoving_ Ben away, out of the classroom, and down the hall toward Headmaster Skywalker's office. Everything was fast and loud and his shoulder hurt where Mr. Cooper grabbed him, and then he was alone, alone in the hall, the stinking hall, supposed to be going toward Headmaster's office. But he couldn't, wouldn't go, because when Mr. Cooper said, "Our school has decided," what he meant is that Headmaster Skywalker had decided, and Uncle Luke had decided that _Ben was bad and can't go home to Mama and Daddy._ And so Ben ran back to his room, where at least it was quiet and didn't smell bad, and he could cry in peace.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the accidental premature posting a couple of days ago, friends! I was editing in the Ao3 interface and accidentally hit "post" while there was still a huge chunk of asynchronous information in the chapter. To make it up to you, I'm going to post a BONUS CHAPTER this week, a very long one. Thanks for all your love and support!


	10. Why Ben Doesn't Go Home, Why Rey Doesn't Tell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> BONUS CHAPTER!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the accidental posting this week, friends! Here's one to tide you over until Wednesday.

1998

Ben was 11, and something really bad was happening at the school. Worse, way worse than usual. The people he liked were disappearing. One day, there, the next day, _poof,_ gone forever. They weren't disappearing over break (he knew, because he was there at school during all the breaks). No, they were in class one day and then just _not_ the next, no warning. Even more mysteriously, they sometimes vanished during lunch, or even between classes. It happened once last year when he was still in the fifth grade, the last year he was in the primary building, when Chrystal Canady vanished for the last week of school before summer break, and Ms. Billings just said that Chrystal's family was taking an early vacation and took her out. That didn't seem right to Ben. Chrystal would have said something, because Chrystal, despite being pretty nice and smelling like birthday cake, liked to brag about her family's money and where they went on vacation. She didn't shut up about going to Italy, for, like, all of fourth grade. If she was going to go somewhere, the whole class would have known.

Now that he was in the middle school building and switching classes every period, he knew a lot more kids, and some of them were actually kind of his friends. They didn't hang out much, but sometimes they did extra credit projects together and stuff, and it was cool. He'd also met kids through the fencing team, and they'd actually voted Ben junior team captain until the team got canceled. The fencing kids were mostly still around, but his other friends, the little ones, were vanishing.

Amber Wright and Julia Billings both disappeared from first period in November, within a week of each other. Just, one day, they weren't in class, and their beds were stripped down and wardrobes emptied. The teacher just said they switched schools, but why would somebody switch schools two weeks before Thanksgiving break? Their friends, when asked, either didn't know or wouldn't say. Then Tula was gone in December, and _three_ kids were gone in January, and now it was February first and Samuel had disappeared. Samuel was... Ben didn't know what Samuel was. Samuel was the smallest boy Ben had ever met that was his same age, and Samuel looked up to Ben. Like, he'd physically get really close, and then crane his neck up at Ben's face and grin, then walk away, as if he liked how Ben is so much taller than he was. They didn't really have anything in common--Samuel was pretty much only into anime and manga, which isn't really Ben's thing, but they could sit together at lunch and Samuel would talk at Ben while Ben ate his tofu block and Tater Tots and it was cool. Samuel also occasionally slipped a piece of candy into Ben's pocket during study time, which was a little uncomfortable--that little hand in his pocket--but still the nicest anybody had been since Ben got here, except his secret friend.

And now Samuel was gone. Ben went to his room, which smelled way more intensely of Samuel's marshmallowy scent than Ben had expected, and it was stripped down. His Sailor Moon posters were all gone, his dresser drawers hanging open like shocked mouths, all the color and life sucked out.

Ben was scared. Who else would go next? Would it be him? Because he'd like to go home. _A lot._ But he thought these kids might not have been going home. Because if they were going home, wouldn't they just say that? Wouldn't they know ahead of time? Wouldn't they say goodbye?

Ben liked detective stories, so he sat on Samuel's bed and thought about what the victims had in common.

One: They are people Ben liked. The assholes didn't go. Which was really a shame, because if something was snatching kids and turning them into snacks for alien xenomorphs, it should totally have been Chris Thomas and her big, lumbering friends.

Two: They were people Ben had been liking _more_ lately. He'd already liked most of them OK, because they had been somewhat less jerky to him, and even maybe nice sometimes, like Samuel, but lately, he'd been actually seeking them out to have lunch with them and stuff. Why? They just seemed... more appealing, lately.

Three: All but two were girls.

Four, and this was the biggest hint: They were all small. Like, really short kids. Chrystal and Amber and Esperanza, all short-tastic. Tula, Carla, Saraswati, Roger M., and Gina, just as short. And Samuel, the shortest of all.

Why would the school be kicking out the shortest kids? Why would it kick out the nicest kids?

Ben felt wrung out just thinking about this. It was an Alpha's job to take care of people, especially anyone really small. His mom had said it, his secret friend said it, but more than anything, Ben knew it in his heart. His little flock was disappearing on his watch. And even worse, somehow, the signs were pointing to the idea that maybe him being around them was making them go away, or get taken away. _Like everything else got taken away._ His panic started to rise up in him, and the nice smell in the room wasn't really helping anymore. It was making him _more_ scared, because if he was sending away the good kids, the little ones he was supposed to take care of, _then, then, then_ he was a _bad Alpha, a bad one who could never go home, never--_

_BANG!_

His whole body sang with the pleasure of movement, the relief of it like a lightning strike shooting up his arms and into his back, driving out the grief and horrifying thoughts. Ben had yanked an empty dresser drawer out of the chest and slung it against the wall. The wall was gouged and the drawer was broken on the floor. _Good._ The next drawer was out of the dresser and crashing into the wall before the sound of the first smash could fade out of his mind. The third one tipped the dresser some as it came out and that was even better--

A hard hand grabbed Ben's arm and stopped him from pulling the dresser over.

_"Ben!_ Stop it!" He was wrenched around and then Mr. Ruiz, the dorm director, was gripping him in both hands, big face in his face. Mr. Ruiz gave him a hard shake. "What are you _doing?!"_

Mr. Ruiz's bugged-out, furious eyes were four inches from Ben's and his coffee breath was all over Ben's face and his shoulders filled up Ben's vision. He smelled like a pile of dirt, a giant, dominant, _angry_ pile of dirt. This somehow made Ben even angrier and more afraid, and he tried to frantically yank himself away. Mr. Ruiz held him even harder, fingers digging into Ben's shoulders. Ben tried to tell him, that kids were being taken away and it was his fault please help him _please_ make him--

and then Mr. Ruiz was shaking him like a rag doll and yelling something in his face and Ben couldn't think couldn't hear couldn't make it--

_"STOP!"_

Silence. Stillness.

Mr. Ruiz let go, backed away, and looked at Ben blankly. The man's mouth sagged open a little, then he nodded his head and looked down. Then, his head shot up again and he was staring furiously at Ben, whole body tense and angry again. With flared nostrils and eyes narrowed, he ordered, "Go to the headmaster's office. _Right now."_

Ben, still panting, ran.

* * *

By the time Ben got to Uncle Luke's office, the adrenaline had worn off, and he was just exhausted, and miserable, and sick to death of being stared at by the janitors and kids randomly in the hall. It was obvious he'd been crying. He was sweaty and his hair was probably sticking up around his bright-red ugly ears. He knew Mr. Ruiz had already used his walkie-talkie to tell Uncle Luke he was coming. That happened every time--he'd get to the office, and the headmaster was waiting with his I'm Very Disappointed In This Behavior face already in place .

He didn't even get a second to sit on the chairs in the receptionist's office. She just waved him at the open door, and there his uncle/headmaster was, looking, yes, Very Disappointed, but also angry in a different way than usual.

Ben slumped right down into the hard chair in front of Mr. Skywalker's desk, and waited for the first question. It was always questions first.

"Do you want to tell me what just happened?"

He shook his head, wishing his hair was long enough to cover his eyes so he wouldn't have to look.

"Because Mr. Ruiz said you were destroying Samuel Hardwick's room and then Alpha commanded him when he tried to stop you."

Ben looked up, furious. "That's a lie!"

Uncle Luke's mouth flattened into an angry line. "So you're telling me that Mr. Ruiz made all this up? Try again."

Ben's mouth felt like it hasd ants in it. He wanted to open it and spit the crawly words out, but knew that it would almost certainly make everything worse, because practically everything he did here, no matter what he meant to do, made something worse for him.

But he had to try. Because of the kids.

"Samuel disappeared," he muttered.

Luke just looked at him, not softening at all.

"So, you had a tantrum in his room and destroyed school property because your friend changed schools."

Ben's chest and belly felt so trembly at hearing it put that way, but he wouldn't just slink away. He had to keep pushing. "He didn't just change schools. He would've _said._ He would've told me he was leaving." He gulped. "He disappeared. Like the rest. Something," and he glanced at Uncle Luke to see if there was a hint in his face of what he suspected was true, "or someone is making the littlest kids disappear."

Uncle Luke's brow furrowed, then cleared as realization passed over his face. "Oh, Ben," he sighed, and scrubbed his hands over his face and down his beard. He leaned forward over his hands and said, "You noticed that some students were withdrawing without advance notice and didn't know why?"

That made it seem really... no big deal, but it was _not_ no big deal. They'd _vanished._

Uncle Luke leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on his desk for a moment, clearly weighing what he was going to say.

_"Please_ tell me what happened to them," Ben begged.

Uncle Luke sighed again, this time in a kind of resigned way. "I would normally not tell a student this." He folded his arms and looks hard at Ben. "The _only_ reason I'm telling you this is to head off future incidents like this."

Ben nodded to keep him talking.

"This information is private. It's not for telling other kids, it's not for sharing with 'just one' kid. It's legally something that is none of your business, and certainly not anyone else's. Can you agree to maintain self control about this and respect your fellow students' privacy?"

He sounded like such a... _jerkhead teacher,_ but Ben nodded.

"The students who left suddenly had all presented as Omegas, and their parents withdrew them for their own safety."

"Oooooohhhhhhh...." Ben let that sink in, wonderingly. _"Of course_ they were Omegas." _The size, the niceness, the good smells. But, but...?_

"But why would they have to leave?" _I would've kept them safe, it's my_ job.

Uncle Luke leaned forward, and Ben could see a little ring of sweat on the shirt under his armpits. Uncle Luke went on, "Omegas don't go to mixed-designation boarding schools. They go to either single-gender schools for Omegas, or they go to nonresidential schools near their home, at least until they're far enough into their teens to be trusted to behave appropriately if a heat comes on."

Ben thought about it for a moment. "So... _all_ the Omegas are going to leave?"

"Yes, by the time they're 13 or 14 at most, they'll likely all be gone."

This seemed so... bleak. All the kids he liked OK must've been Omegas---every one. They were small, they smelled nice, they weren't mean.

"Do they come back after they're OK with their heats?"

Uncle Luke shook his head. "Our school wouldn't take them back. Omegas have the best outcomes with their own families, or in environments where they aren't subject to designationism from other students. And we're not equipped to prevent the distractions a breakthrough heat would create, even if the student behaved maturely. Typical Alpha violence like yours today is a good example of what we're trying to prevent."

_So it_ is _my fault I can't have friends...._

Luke continued sourly, "And speaking of typical Alpha behavior, you violated your behavioral contract when you commanded Mr. Ruiz. That's very serious, not only because you've broken my trust, but because what you did is illegal."

"He was hurting me!" Ben cried.

"Really Ben? He was hurting you?" Mr. Skywalker said, looking sardonic. "How was he hurting you?"

Ben said, "He was grabbing me and shaking me." He pulled down the collar of his uniform sweater, and sure enough, there were still red marks where Mr. Ruiz's hands were. They weren't bruises, just red marks. "See?"

Uncle Luke looked a little taken aback, then seemed to decide something. "I'll talk to him about that," he said tiredly. "That doesn't change the fact that you destroyed schoolproperty and made the command, even if you thought it was in self-defense. You were still in the wrong."

Ben didn't know what he was supposed to have done. It _was self-defense_. Mr. Ruiz had been hurting him, and when he was so scared like that, he couldn't think, he couldn't make the bad feelings go away unless he moved, moved fast, did something, _hit_ something, made it _stop._ He just hung his head. "I'm sorry," he finally said, not because he really was, but because saying that usually made grownups relent some.

"Well, you should be," Mr. Skywalker said. "You did things that were not acceptable. You're going to apologize to Mr. Ruiz, and you're going to have to explain to your mother about why she's paying to repair a wall and replace a dresser, and why you're not going home again this spring break."

Ben's head shot up. "What?!"

"You heard me," Mr. Skywalker said, getting red in the face. "You know exactly what the consequences are for Alpha-commanding. You've misused your abilities as an Alpha since day one, and this behavior is just another example of you not taking responsibility for your actions. You were sent here--"

"I was trying to help them!"

"Who were you trying to help by smashing furniture? You--"

"I was trying to protect the Omegas! It's my _job!"_

Mr. Skywalker got _really_ red in the face then. "You don't have a _job!_ You're 11! Just because you're an Alpha doesn't mean you have an excuse to smash everything around you in the name of stereotypical designation behavior. Your hormones don't rule you, and you are here to learn that, and you'll _stay_ here until you do!"

_"NO!"_ Ben bellowed. _"I want to go HOME!"_

_"Too bad!"_ the headmaster yelled back. "You're staying right here with no phone privileges--"

So he couldn't even _talk_ to Mom and Dad?! "NO!" And then Ben's throat _twitched. "YOU'RE GOING TO SEND ME HOME!"_

Mr. Skywalker's face went blank. His jaw drooped a little. His shoulders relaxed and the redness drained out of his face. He dropped back down into his desk chair and said, "I'm going to send--"

The receptionist burst through the door. "Mr. Skywalker!" she said, looking at Ben in horror. "He just Alpha commanded you!"

The headmaster looked up slowly, blinking at her. "What?" he asked dully.

"This... _boy..._ just Alpha commanded you to send him home." She was still staring at Ben like he was a literal monster sitting on the wooden chair across from Mr. Skywalker's desk.

Mr. Skywalker frowned, puzzled, then his eyes widened. He sucked in a breath of air and his face went _purple._

* * *

Ben didn't go home for spring break that year. Or summer vacation. Or Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Without phone or visiting privileges, Ben didn't see or talk to his parents for two years.

By that time, all the Omegas his age were gone.

By that time, his only friend was the one he kept a secret.  
  
  


* * *

2009

By the time their second year together had rolled around, Rey had figured out that the weirdest thing about Finn was that he was only weird on the outside. He still sat with military attention in every class. He still tracked any adult Alphas in the room like they were a spiteful god itching to rain down fire on him. He still occasionally said things like _"That_ marches on the side of righteousness!" when he wasn't thinking about it. But, when it came down to it, he was really normal on the inside. He was _nice._ He was _trusting,_ however that was possible. He was so eager to learn, so excited about new ideas, about whatever might be true about of the world outside the First Order, that he shoved aside the culty stuff jammed into his afro-topped head and ate up whatever the teachers put in front of him.

Rey wasn't like that. She was weird on the outside--raggedy, greasy-fingernailed, and smelling like crankcase oil. And then, on the inside, she was a seething, sweating sea of fear and twisty thoughts, like a spooky kelp bed in that sea. She was always thinking that her doom was about to arrive, so it made it hard to concentrate in class. She knew that if anyone nice knew what she was, maybe even Finn, they'd probably turn her in to the "authorities" (whom Rey vaguely guessed were the police and maybe the FBI) for her own "protection." She knew that if anyone _not_ nice knew, they'd kidnap her and either force her to mate some Alpha they knew, or they'd secretly sell her off on some secret Omega dark-web eBay to the highest bidder. She also gotten old enough to figure out that her arrangement with Unkar was definitely illegal, not just messed up, and if anyone knew about _that,_ either, she'd be taken away and put in some _real_ foster-type place where it would become a lot harder to keep her secret when the time came, if that was going to be possible, like, at all. That made it hard for her to talk to people and hard to focus in class. And on top of all that, Rey knew she had to be perfectly _not too weird,_ perfectly unsuspicious, if she was going to fly under the radar for as long as possible. It was exhausting.

That semester, she and Finn had health class together. The class had already suffered through the mortification of the unit on biological processes, Rey clenching her teeth with anxiety over the lectures on mating and scenting. Now they were starting the unit on Designations in Society. Rey had internally growled through the parts about the history of Alphas in charge and Omegas submissive and Betas subordinate, only feeling like a person again instead of a pissed-off cat with her tail puffed up during the units on the Birth Control Revolution and the Great Extinguishing, when heat suppressants and blockers became a thing. Ms. Fleet, who was known for being kind of a nutty liberal, said that day that she was giving them a list of topics to choose to write a report on, and handed out sheets of paper. The list read:

-How Alphas, Betas, or Omegas (choose one) can manage sexual feelings  
-Interdesignation relationships (Beta-Alpha or Beta-Omega)  
-Homodesignation relationships (Alpha-Alpha, Omega-Omega)  
-Deltas in society  
-Oppression of Betas or Omegas (choose one) by Alphas in history  
-Effects of Alpha privilege on society  
-Beta relationships....

Rey glanced through the rest of the topics, and her eyes seemed to freeze in their sockets when she saw, right in the middle of the page, "Anassa Omegas in society." She should not pick this topic. She absolutely should not. There should be not one single thing that could be seen as tying her and this horrible designation together. _But,_ if she picked the topic, she'd finally have a legitimate, nothing-to-see-here excuse to Google Anassas from the school library terminals without worrying about those little signs that said the computer searches were monitored and the ID numbers of the students who used them were stored with their search histories. And she was horribly, sickly curious, like being wanting to look at a roadkilled animal. Everything she knew about Anassas came from the book _Padme's Heart,_ which was written for kids and was not the most packed with facts. It was also, she remembered, written in the 1950s, so probably didn't have much of the yay-girlpower take that a newer book might have.

Silently, she wrote her name on the top of the worksheet and checked the Anassa Omegas box on the list. She glanced over at Finn's list. He'd checked "Deltas in society."

Under the rustling sound of the papers being handed back, Rey asked him, "Why Deltas?"

He smirked. "Because that's the craziest stuff I've ever heard of. In the old place," which was how he referred to the First Order, "they would've totally wigged over the idea that somebody could just change designations. And anything those guys would hate, I want to know all about." He had that fervent look that he got whenever he was talking about the old place. "What about you?"

She shrugged. "Oh, I'm doing Anassa Omegas. Because I don't know anything about them, I guess. I just want to learn."

"You're cool, Rey," he said, and extended his pencil, eraser-end out toward her.

"Yeah, you too, you rebel," she said, and tapped her eraser to his, as if they were clinking glasses to toast their shared awesomeness.

That study period, she went straight to the school library and first flipped through the stupid card catalog that the place still used, since the report required that she use at least two books for sources, along with the internet. The Anassa Omega card had just three books on it. One was _Padme's Heart,_ one was _Queen Omegas_ , and the last one was _Mother of Armies._ She gathered up the second two, skimmed through them, and then planted herself in the most secluded terminal in the room and started Googling.

The first page of results the search engine vomited up started with video clips related to Padme Amidala. Rey clicked on the first one, which was titled, "1935 Gymnastics World Championships Compilation, Uneven Bars, Padme at 6:18" For the first six minutes of the video, Rey was mostly idly curious. She'd never realized that gymnastics back then had been so hokey looking. Compared the hugely muscled, powerhouse girls in the modern Olympics, who did triple rotations and quadruple flip dismounts, this was like tumbling-for-kindergartners stuff. The gymnasts would stand carefully on one of the bars, gather their trembling balance, and then stretch out a leg horizontally in front of them. That was it. Rest the leg on the higher bar, then sit on the bar and turn around. Whoop-de-do. They might go under a bar and back up, like really slow parkour, but that was it. At 6:10, Rey turned the sound up just enough to hear the announcer, who sounded like a smarmy Jimmy Stewart clone, say, "Next we'll see Padme Amidala, the reigning world champion from Poland. We hear that this spirited little filly isn't just a gymnast. The world-beating Hebrew Omega keeps her hands busy with local politics, if you can believe that. Apparently, the Poles respect a girl who can hit the bars. Speaking of bars, look at this approach..." Rey turned the sound back off and just watched the young woman who strode out onto the mats. 

Rey was instantly transfixed. She'd seen a handful of pictures in _Padme's Heart,_ but never seen the tragic girl move. In the grainy black and white, a slim, muscular young woman with a heart-shaped face stepped onto the floor, posed with feet together and one arm high and graceful as the neck of a swan. Then Padme _ran_ at the bars with her powerful legs in a blur. She leapt onto the apparatus like she was attacking it, and though her style and moves were reasonably in keeping with what the other gymnasts had been doing, everything was so much smoother and faster that it was like she was a different kind of a human. She was courageous and fluid in a way the other women weren't and did a couple of actually dangerous-looking flips and turns, using muscles that no one else seemed to have. She used her momentum to fling herself through space, instead of fighting to keep her balance. Rey clicked the sound back up as Padme dismounted, in time to hear the announcer crying out, "...never seen anything like it! What a dynamo! The judges are going to have to rule if that dismount is even legal for girls--no one's ever tried it here in the ladies' arena. Folks, we're seeing history here today!" The judge's scorecards flipped up: 10.0, 10.0, 10.0, 9.9, 10.0. Rey knew that Padme had gone home as the World Champion in every women's event that year--the uneven bars, pommel horse, rings, horizontal bar, and floor exercise.

Rey's heart ached. Was it better that Padme had gotten to burn so brightly before she was blown out, or did that just make the end all the more terrible?

The next video started autoplaying before Rey really noticed, and it was just a short clip of a miniscule young woman in an old-fashioned gymnastics costume talking to a reporter. It was titled, "Masia Speaks for Padme, 1936," and it was hashtagged #omegasforomegas, #anassarightsareomegarights, #omegarightsarewomensrights, and #jewishgirlswontshutup. Rey turned the sound up and replayed it. The girl was really teensy--she couldn't have been 4'10", but she was talking in a cultured, adult voice, using beautifully accented English. The reporter said to her in front of the big silver microphone, "Masia, what a victory! How do you feel as a second-time Olympian taking the gold here in Berlin?" The tiny girl said sharply, "How do I feel? Well not so good, to tell you the truth. This gold medal I'm wearing should belong to my teammate, Padme Amidala. She deserved to compete here, and she deserved to win, a hundred times more than me. Just because some Alphas won't control themselves shouldn't mean that the greatest gymnast in history should be banned from competition. I know, and you know, and your listeners know that if the Olympic committed would just--" and then a big male arm snaked in from off-camera, clamped on the tiny woman's arm, and _yanked_ her out of sight. There was a ruckus as the reporter dashed after them and cried out, "Hey, fella! You can't treat a--" and then the film went to that black target thingy and the video ended.

Masia had been in _Padme's Heart._ She was Padme's best friend and teammate, and had stood up for Padme over and over, first when she presented as an Anassa and been pulled from training and competition, and then on the world stage when she herself took a couple of medals in the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany. What would it be like to have a friend like that, who knew everything, and still stuck by you? Finn might, but Rey sighed and shook her head. She could never let herself try to find out.

Rey clicked out of YouTube, which she wasn't allowed to reference anyway, and went back to her search results.

**[PDF] World Historical List of Known Anassa Omegas  
** genealogyandhistory.utah.org  
[2009] Read about all 49 known Anassa Omegas, plus their famous mates and children!

**Where Are All the Anassas?  
** alphalifestyle.com  
October 4, 2009 - Hidden in family compounds, kept on yachts mid-ocean, maybe even held in flying jet fortresses that never touch land, the world's Anassa Omegas are invisible to the public eye. Let's take a virtual tour of their known and best-guess locations around the world!

**Anassa Omegas: What Makes Them So Unique?  
** sci-for-funsies.com  
September 18, 2009 - No Anassa Omega has ever been scientifically studied in modern times, so this article will speculate about what might make Anassas so fertile and attractive to Alphas.

**First Order: Susannah Snoke Pregnant with Alpha Sextuplets  
** denver.news.com  
May 1, 2009 - The Anassa Omega Susannah Snoke is pregnant with six Alpha sons, according to a press release issued by First Order spokesman Armitage Hux. Snoke, 30, is already mother to 15 Alpha sons, born as a set of triplets and three sets of quadruplets. The First Order, which was founded in 1994 by U.S. Senator Paul Snoke (R-CO), describes Susannah Snoke...

**Saudi Prince Ponies Up $100 Million Bride Price for Fatima al-Farouk  
** assoc-press.com  
January 30, 2009 - Prince Miteb, 39, of the Saudi Royal family has reportedly delivered the final deposit on the $100 million bride price promised to the family of Fatima al-Farouk, the now 16-year-old Anassa Omega. Al-Farouk, who has been kept in seclusion since she presented at age 11 at a shopping mall in Islamabad...

**Check Out Fatima's Wedding Gown!  
** people.weddings.com  
January 28, 2009 - No expense was spared for this $127,000 Beta-made Armani wedding gown with its 30-foot train. The Anassa's parents report that the now 5'7" super-breeding cutie, who hasn't been photographed since she was 11, will wear the ruby-studded golden gown in a mid-ocean private ceremony on the groom's just-christened yacht, the O-Face.

**Fatima Fun Facts!  
** people.omegas.com  
January 25, 2009 - Fatima al-Farouk was born on September 4, 1987 to a banker and stay at home mother in Islamabad, Pakistan. She was reportedly a top student and keen athlete from early childhood, taking home numerous science medals from the Preparatory School Islamabad, where she...

**[PDF] The Great Wives: Anassas as Helpmeets to Heroes  
** [1986] Throughout history, the Anassa Omega has been associated with great men. Emperors, generals, and dictators have all claimed these rare prizes, signaling their prowess as Alphas. The role of the Anassa to further her mate's aspirations is well-known in the cases of over 35 of these hyper-nurturers...

**[PDF] Padme's Heart (Book), full text  
** [1957] What killed the world's greatest gymnast, and the bravest girl in Poland? A broken heart. Born in the wealthiest neighborhood in Warsaw, little Padme Amidala dreamed of being a gymnast, of flying high in the air, free as a circus acrobat...

**Sexy Anassa Costumes, Sexy Pregnancy Costumes, Sexy Viking  
** womenscostumes.com  
Strut your stuff, Mother of Armies! Costume includes HUGE pregnancy belly with booby bodice, horned Viking helmet, pleather skirt, pleather leash, and studded pleather collar with mating bite window. Fits sizes XS to L.

Rey opened the least-yucky of the articles in new tabs, and then went through a couple more pages of Google results, looking for anything that fit the theme of Anassas in society. The problem was that they _weren't_ in society. The second they were found out, they were shut away, and then all you ever read about them was what Alphas were saying about them. Rey knew it was supposed to be for protection. They were desirable, high-status trophy mates, and some myths said that Alphas went crazy over their scents, maybe even going into insane, killing rages that could wipe out an entire army. A lot of it seemed like Alphas just wanting bragging rights, though. The Alphas who mated Anassas wanted to be known as the men who could beat out every other Alpha competitor. Which was totally gross and had nothing at all to do with what the Anassa wanted. Ugh--it sounded like slavery. And if it _wasn't_ slavery, if maybe these Anassas actually wanted to mate the most murdery of the murderers, then their own emotions would enslave them, and they'd just be grinning idiots for their Alphas and babies. Rey couldn't help but imagine someone like Unkar buying her up, and then she'd have to... do everything... with Unkar for the rest of her worthless life, and _like_ it. _Love_ it.

Rey shuddered, feeling sick and mad, mad, mad, while she read and took notes for two hours. Then, she opened up a Word document and started typing. This report wasn't due for two weeks, but Pete was going to let her start rebuilding her first engine tonight--a '99 Firebird, too--so she might as well get it out of the way.  
  
  


Rey Niima  
September 19, 2010  
7th Period Health  
Ms. Fleet

Kept in a Jar: The Curse of the Anassa Omega

_"Attila the Hun reputedly kept the unmated Anassa, Channa, in a vast, almost-sealed jar, which he would wheel out and then open during battles. Legend says that upon scenting her, the enemy's Alpha soldiers would kill each other without engaging Attila's all-Beta army, ensuring Attila's victory."_ From Mother of Armies by Fred J. Rockwell, 1973

Of all the designations, the Anassa subdesignation of Omegas is the rarest and I think the most oppressed. Very few actual facts are known about Anassas' real lives because these Omegas are so rare (about one birth in a billion), and they are always removed from general society after they present. Anassa means "Queen" in Greek, and according to the book Queen Omegas by Edward J. Curtis VI, Anassas have also been called names like the Polumētōr ("Mother of Many") and the Stratomētōr ("Mother of Armies"). These names are used for several reasons that I will describe in this paper.

The basic facts about Anassa Omegas are that they are a random mutation born only to to an Alpha-male and Omega-female pairing. They usually present around the normal age for Omegas, and once they present, Curtis says their pheromone scents are so strong that they are "instinctively identifiable by any Alpha male, including mated ones, as a highly desirable mate." This scent is similar to the scent of an Omega in heat, but much stronger and all the time instead of in cycles. It can cause extreme aggression in Alpha males and travels for miles. According to the article, "The Great Wives: Anassas as Helpmeets of Heroes," by Herbert White, the one known male Anassa, Hephaestion, helped Alexander the Great rise to power because Hephaestion presented while working as a wine server at a meeting of Alexander's political rivals, who all killed each other in the fight over who would mate the boy. Alexander himself then mated and claimed him. White also says that Genghis Khan would bring his Anassa mate, Börte Üjin, onto the battlefield with him, and his enemies would instantly surrender because they knew that any Alpha who could claim an Anassa must be a superior warrior. 

Anassas' desirability as mates comes from three characteristics and one social effect. The social effect is that an Alpha who mates an Anassa has bragging rights that he has now joined the company of Alphas like Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. The first biological characteristic is the Anassa's powerful scent, which the mate gets to enjoy for life. The second is that Anassas almost always have multiple-fetus pregnancies, and if they eat special diets before getting pregnant, they can be forced to have all-Alpha or all-Omega babies, as well as a very high number of babies. (Thus they are called "Mother of Many" and "Mothers of Armies.") The babies are almost always strong, healthy, and grow up into healthy adults, which is especially wanted because it contrasts them with the children of Betas, who are more likely to have health problems. The article "World Historical List of Anassa Omegas," by the Genealogical Society of Utah, states that the highest confirmed number of births in a single pregnancy by an Anassa was ten Alphas, born to Shiba Aneko of Tokyo, Japan, in 1820, who died after the birth, along with six of the babies. The third desirable characteristic is that once they are claimed, Anassas are completely devoted to their mate, never arguing, always supportive, willing to do whatever will make their mate happy, and feeling very happy themselves as long as their mate is pleased with them. This is similar to how a normal Omega feels about her mate during her heat. Once an Anassa has babies, they have the same kind of feelings for their babies and will tend their children unselfishly, no matter how many they have, giving up all other pastimes. But does that happiness make up for the negatives of being an Anassa?

One of those negatives is that an Anassa's pheromones remain extremely attractive to Alphas even after they are claimed. This means that some Anassas in history, like Iris Ouvrard of France, were widowed dozens of times because another Alpha assassinated the Anassa's then-mate, took her captive, and then mated her himself once the claiming pheromones of the previous mate faded (like with regular Omegas, this takes about a year if the claim is not renewed and the Omega is not exposed to her former mate's pheromones).Second, a normal Omega who is given a mating bite when they aren't willing doesn't feel or act mated. They can just ignore it (and hopefully they prosecute the Alpha who did it, in my opinion). However, according to Bertrand Green, author of the article, "Anassa Omegas: What Makes Them So Unique?" the Anassa's omegagen and oxytocin hormone levels are so high during their heats that they will accept any mating bite that happens in their heat, even if they normally would not like that person. This allows a mating bond to develop without the Anassa having a choice in the matter. What happens then? How does an Anassa live with being forced by her hormones to love and have babies with someone she didn't choose? No one knows, because these Anassas have left no records.

Finally, Anassas are usually locked up "for their own protection" as soon as they're identified. They have to give up everything they can't do while being "protected." The most famous modern Anassa, Padme Amidala, was the greatest female gymnast in the world when she was revealed as an Anassa at 22 years old in 1932, according to Padme's Heart _,_ by Phillip J. Robinson. As soon as she was identified, she was barred from practicing and competing, and she was removed from her roles in local politics. She soon mated the fellow Polish gymnast originally known as Anakin Skywalker, who, despite his wife being Jewish, later joined the Nazi party and German military. Padme died of heartbreak just after she gave birth to twins while her husband was leading the Nazi invasion of Poland, destroying her homeland. (Her husband then took the name Darth Vader and was promoted by Hitler to be the Nazi High Commander, partly because of his high status as Padme's former mate.)

Anassas these days are very rich because they marry into the families of Alphas who can pay huge bride prices to the Anassa's parents. The highest bride price was probably $100 million, which was paid for Fatima Al-Farouk this year according to the Associated Press. (She is 16 and is going to mate a 39-year-old man who _bought_ her.) However, few people know anything about Anassas' real lives after presenting and especially after mating, because they are all kept in seclusion. It's like these women are just eaten up and digested by the people who take over their lives, and are never seen again. They could be prisoners or tortured. No one knows except the few people who get to see them, and those people can say whatever they want. The Anassas might as well be living in jars.

Rey finished the paper and clicked Print with a vicious click of the mouse. She was never, ever going to let herself get caught. _Never._


	11. Why Rey Runs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you all see that I posted a bonus chapter a couple of days ago? ("Why Ben Doesn't Go Home") And then that I added another hunk of text ("Why Rey Doesn't Tell") to it a few hours later, when I *again* realized I'd posted without meaning to? (Now I'm pretty sure that both instances were Ao3 glitches.) Anyway, here's a fat chapter for you that explains a number of small mysteries.
> 
> WARNING: VIOLENCE AND BRIEF ATTEMPTED SEXUAL ASSAULT IN THIS CHAPTER. To skip it, stop at the line, "Get away from my things, you pervert!" and start again at "Then it's time to listen!" I'll give you a brief rundown of what happened in the endnotes.

2011

Rey was 14, and she still hadn't presented, even as a regular Omega. Every day that she didn't was a victory, and a voice inside her practically sang, " _They were wrong, they were wrong, they were wrong!"_

There would be no horrible old men, no house like a prison and big payment to Unkar. There might be high school and somehow, somehow there could be college, and she could actually become a rich, famous inventor, and she might, maybe, really _escape._ She imagined that somehow she and Finn would run off together to somewhere green and beautiful, with sidewalks and endless rolling grass. Not that Finn really needed to escape anymore, because his adoptive parents, Rod and Shaunda, were really nice, but still. He would come with her, that she knew.

In fact, she was practically certain that, like him, she _was_ a beta. That whatever that disgusting spit-sniffer at Helica said, the DNA company must've switched her sample with another girl's, and some poor sap out there was wondering why Alphas were pounding on her door 24 hours a day. Well, that girl's family could probably afford to get the test redone, and then they'd figure it out, and that would be that. Bad for her, awesome for Rey.

Now that Rey was feeling alive again, _hope_ again, and had a real friend, she lived for two things only--Finn and school. She knew academic scholarships were her one route to college. She couldn't try out for any teams because, it turned out, sports teams required permission slips and a shocking amount of fees, plus rides to get places, and practice time every day that Plutt would never give her, so she definitely wouldn't get a sports scholarship. Instead, she took extra-credit classes, gifted-and-talented classes, international baccalaureate classes, whatever was hardest and supposedly looked best on a college application. Jakku Middle School might have been surrounded by dust and poverty, but the engineers and researchers at BP had demanded a fantastic curriculum for their good-English-education offspring. And now that she'd figured out that she could nick the batteries out of all the new trucks that came into the scrap yard and hook them up to her RV, she could study at home after dark, and that was all she did when she wasn't working. She'd even snuck an extra textbook out of every classroom, so she had one set for home and didn't have to bruise her back running home with them in her backpack.

Finn took most of the advanced classes with her, and though he still occasionally sounded like a cultist, he had a lot more friends than she did. He needed people to spend time with outside of school, after all, since that still wasn't really an option for her. She wondered sometimes if he wasn't so loyal to her just because he _had been_ a cultist, and that was the kind of thing they beat into a kid, but she was grateful for his constant jokes, his huge, kind heart, and his willingness to not ever ask too many questions about her. She did worry that he'd never be able to date anyone because people at school thought she was his girlfriend (which she could never be until she was really, really, 1000% sure that she was actually a Beta). Finn was cute--really cute--and such a perfect friend, but fortunately, somehow, he just didn't... smell right? She didn't know. But that wasn't how she thought of him, and it wasn't how he thought of her, she was sure. There was no uncomfortably googly-eyeing or anything. They just flowed together like water, as friends, and swerved in other directions for the other thing. The other thing that Rey might never be able to have anyway.

* * *

2012

Rey was 15, and filling out a worksheet with Finn in Mr. Walker's physics class in the new Jakku High science building. Both Rey and Finn were perfectly focused, because that was what they did in class. They focused. And they paid attention, to everything. Rey, because she knew that academics were her ticket out of Jakku, and Finn, now that he was caught up to his grade level, was obviously a naturally good student who'd had attentiveness literally beaten into him. As the class quietly murmured and scratched away with their pencils, Mr. Walker strolled around, glancing at the various lab partners' work. When he reached their table, he nodded approvingly at their equations, and asked, "Having any trouble?"

Finn answered, "No sir," and then broke his military bearing for a moment and seemed to repress a smile.

Mr. Walker asked, "Something funny, Mr. Storm?"

Finn actually grinned. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, sir, but your shirt has a typo on it." He was the sophomore editor of the school newspaper, and it turned out that he was a proofreading _geek._ He _lived_ to catch typos.

The teacher glanced curiously down at his chest, pulling the fabric of the cheap cotton footrace T-shirt out so he could see it around his greying beard, and said, "Disturbing. And where would that be?"

Finn said, "It says 100 miles, not 100 meters. Someone didn't get your lecture on the awesomeness of the metric system."

Rey grinned, too. Mr. Walker gave them both an unusually dry expression--and Mr. Walker was a supremely dry dude already. "And what gives you the impression that 100 miles is the incorrect distance?" he asked.

Finn gave him one of his patented confused-golden-retriever head-cocks. "Beeeecause... your shirt has runners on it and not bicycles?"

"And?"

"And people don't run 100 miles. If they're super-bad, they bike 100 miles. People run, like... meters. Or maybe it's supposed to be _10_ miles."

Mr. Walker _snorted_ at Finn and said, "Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong."

"Sir?" Finn asked, suddenly worried.

Mr. Walker explained, "This shirt is from a 100-mile ultramarathon. That's a distance that people _run._ It's on a course where people also race mountain bikes, but that is newfangled and bad for the trails."

Finn said, far more tentatively, "Sir, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but that's... wow, I don't even know. How's that even possible? Does it take, like, a week?" He cocked his thumb at Rey and said, "Rey runs _all the time_ and it would take her a week."

Mr. Walker said, "29 hours--" at the same time Rey corrected, "Five days."

Mr. Walker raised an eyebrow at Rey. "Excuse me, Ms. Niima?"

Rey cleared her throat and thought of saying _Oh, nothing, nothing!_ because she needed to be _careful_ but now he was _looking_ at her. "Sorry," she said. "I just meant that I run 100 miles in five days. Not a week."

Now he was _really_ looking at her, and not in that _you're an excellent student, Ms. Niima_ way that she liked. With his eyes all suspicious and squinty, he asked, "What do you mean, that you run 100 miles in five days?"

She shifted in her seat and looked down at her pencil. "I run to school and back. I live out on Brown Road, past the county line. It's ten miles each way." She thought, _Aaaaand now he's going to ask why I don't have a bike and why no one drives me,_ shit!

To her utter surprise, he asked instead, "And _how often_ are you running these 100-mile not-weeks?"

She blinked. "Every week. Every school week, I mean. And then more on the weekends, when I have to do errands for... errands."

He leaned slightly forward in his battered running shoes and asked, "You're telling me that you run 20 miles _a day?_ _Every day?"_

She just nodded, then pressed her lips together. "Closer to 21, I think. Except weekends."

Mr. Walker was now looking at her with alarming intensity. "How fast do you run your morning ten miles?"

She didn't even have to think about it. "If I'm not in a hurry, an hour and ten minutes." Mr. Walker's eyebrows shot up, and she stumbled on, "When I was really late for first period once, I did it in 50-something minutes, but I threw up when I got here, so I was late anyway."

Mr. Walker looked utterly taken aback, then arranged his usual inscrutable expression back over his face. He rapped on their lab table and said, "See me after school today, Ms. Niima. Now, both of you, back to work."

* * *

After her last class, Rey stowed her books and trotted back to the physics lab. The last couple of kids were meandering out, a pair of identical twin boys punching each other in the upper arms while they hooted to each other about a video game. Rey waited until they left and slipped in.

Mr. Walker nodded at her from behind his big desk at the front of the room and said, "Come pull up a seat, kid."

She pulled out the other tall stool beside him and hopped up without saying anything.

"Thanks for coming in, Rey," he said calmly.

 _OK._ She swallowed hard. "You're welcome. I have to head home, soon, though. I have to start work."

"OK," he nodded, then looked at her with those piercing, _I know physics_ eyes. "I just have some questions. Why aren't you on the track team or cross-country?"

Rey twisted in her seat, looked out the window, then looked at her feet. She chose the least-damning answer she could think of: "My guardian doesn't approve of sports."

Mr. Walker's nose twitched. "And yet she has you running 100 miles a week." It wasn't a question.

Rey fiddled with the hem of her shorts and said, "He's a man. And I'm not running for sports. It's transportation. To school, and errands for work."

He just kept _looking_ at her. "Why is someone not driving you to school instead of having you run all that way?"

Again, a least-damning answer. "I live on Brown Road. The school buses don't go out there because it's all businesses."

Mr. Walker narrowed his eyes at her. "I'm aware. But why is someone not driving you? Does your guardian not have access to a car?"

Rey caught her nervous giggle before it could bubble out of her mouth. Not have access to cars! Holding her mouth in an appropriately neutral position, she said, "He's just really busy. He owns a business."

"And you don't ride with a friend because...?"

"I live on Brown Road."

"Ah, yes. There are no other homes on Brown Road. And you don't bike because...?"

"I had four bikes stolen in a row. It's easier to just run."

He sighed and said, "Rey, my concerns about your access to transportation aside, did you know you there's a good chance you could earn college scholarships if you were competing for the school? Your schoolwork is excellent, but an additional sports scholarship--"

She shook her head. "My guardian would never... I'm sorry to interrupt. He would never sign the permission slips for a team. Or pay the fees. Or let me stay after school for practices. That's... that's not his thing."

He said, "Rey, I've already talked to Coach Barwell, and she'd be happy to speak to him about--"

 _"No!"_ Rey put a hand over her mouth, both horrified that she'd practically yelled at a _teacher_ and at what he was implying _._ Unkar would hit her so hard. "I'm sorry. Please. I'd get in trouble. For asking. For... any of it. Please don't."

He looked at her very carefully, as if weighing his next response, then just said. "I think that's very unfortunate."

Rey took the cue that she was about to be dismissed and reached for her backpack. Mr. Walker suddenly asked, though, "Rey, why do you run?"

"Because I live--"

"No, why do you _run?"_ He repeated. "You could walk to the nearest school bus stop and ride in from there, or make arrangements with _someone_ going into town or going back out. You could get a bike with a better lock, or make arrangements to store it someplace safe. But you say you run _the whole way, every day, both directions._ Nobody runs twenty miles in the desert every day unless they _want to_. Why do you _run?"_

She did a full, Finn-worthy head-tilt. She hadn't really thought about it, but suddenly she realized, _because it makes me feel free, and it takes me everywhere.Because no one can take it away from me._ "Because I like it," she said, as close as she could get to the truth.

"Good." He got that measuring look again, and said, "I ask because even if you can't compete for the school team, you could race as an amateur now. If you wanted to. You'd have to arrange for the occasional weekend morning off, and then if you worked up to longer distances, you could make some arrangement to take a whole weekend off." He folded his hands on his thigh and said, "If you continued running the same amount you currently are, but with some specific training, I think you could win prize money."

 _Wha--?  
  
_"There's _prize money?_ Like, _how much_ money?" She was a little shocked. It had never occurred to her that running was worth money. It was the opposite of worth money, considering how often she had to replace her thrift-store sneakers.

"Depends on the race," he said. "Marathons are very big business, but the running times you're talking about aren't nearly fast enough for marathons. They're excellent times for ultramarathons, though, and your weekly mileage tells me that you're fully capable of those distances. An ultra is technically any race longer than a marathon, but with your times and running schedule, I'm guessing you could easily run fifty miles, and people who can do fifties can usually do hundreds with the right training and support. The purse for fifties is usually only about $2000, but the entry fees are high, and you'd need to buy aid station supplies, so you might only clear $1000 if you won."

It had taken her three _years_ to scratch together $300 the last time she'd tried to save money. And she could earn $1000 in a _weekend?_ If she did, she'd be _rich._ Like middle class rich, like _leaving Unkar_ rich. She could buy _food,_ and live in an _apartment._ She could buy a car and save for college.

He went on, "I don't want to get your hopes up too far, without knowing what you can do, but you should also know that the hundred-plus mile ultras, especially the high-altitude trail races, have bigger prizes. This one," he said, gesturing at his own shirt, "had a prize of $20,000."

Rey felt her jaw slacken. "$20,000 for one race? For the winner?" Then, a wave of disappointment. "But that's for the overall winner, right? The Alpha male winner?"

Mr. Walker smiled, an expression that seemed almost foreign on his face. "The _winner_ winner. Ultrarunning is one of the few sports where all genders and designations have a real chance of winning the whole field. There's something about extreme endurance sports that level out any advantages that Alphas and men have. There've been a number of years when the world's top ultrarunners were all women. The first one was an Alpha, but Beta women have won many races as well. In fact, a Beta woman won this race, if I recall correctly," he said, and gestured to his shirt.

"Do you think I could..." She had to stop herself from hyperventilating.

"Win an ultra? Rey, you might be a very talented runner, but you're not trained, your form is probably not ideal, and what a person can do over a short distance like ten miles doesn't necessarily hold up in the kinds of distances we're talking about. What do you think the longest is that you've run with only short breaks"

She babbled in a rush, "I had to run to Kelvin Ridge once, to get a solenoid for a Buick my guardian was going to sell that afternoon, and it was 25 miles there and 25 miles back, and I had to slow down because it was so far but not much because he said I'd better not make him lose the sale and so I left at seven sharp and was back before 11:30 _isthatfastenough?"_

Mr. Walker ran a quick calculation in his head and looked at her hard. "Are you sure that's really accurate?"

"The sign by the highway says "Kelvin Ridge: 25 Miles" on it, and the parts shop is just inside the town limits. Mr. Walker, I have a lot of time to think about this stuff."

His eyes widened and he looked more excited than she'd ever seen him, even when he did the explosive-concussion demonstration for class. He said, "If you really did 50 miles in 5 and a half hours, those are six-and-a-half-minute miles, which, just in terms of pure time, would have won you at least the women's first prize at the last 50-miler I ran, and you probably would've placed in the top five of the overall field."

Rey's breath trembled in her chest and she was about to leap out of her seat in excitement.

"BUT," he said, "and this is a big problem, the run to Kelvin Ridge from Brown Road is flat. Everything out here is flat. Almost all ultras are on hilly ground, and the ones with the big prizes are in the mountains. Some of them are above 10,000 feet. That's a very different challenge."

Rey was crestfallen. She gazed at her ratty sneakers, then out the door of the classroom. "I should've known," she said, shaking her head. "Unkar probably wouldn't give his permission anyway. It was stupid."

Mr. Walker grabbed a ruler and _whacked_ it against the desktop in front of her. _"Hey!"_

She startled like he'd smacked _her_.

"No moping!" he said. "We're going to be strategic about this. You can train for altitude and hills without having access to them. We're going to figure this out."

"We?"

"You need a teacher," he said. "I swore to myself that if I met another young person who really had the ability and drive to challenge designation bigotry, I'd help them. You're the best student in this class, and considering where you're starting from, I think you have the potential-- _if you work very, very hard at it_ \--to become a championship runner. And frankly, the idea of a helping an Omega become a champion at any sport makes me happy for personal reasons."

Wait.

Wait.

"Omega?" she said faintly. "But I'm a..." she licked her suddenly bone-dry lips. "I'm a Beta. Mr. Walker. I'm a Beta."

His eyes narrowed in disbelief. "Rey..." He seemed to stop himself. "Rey, I'd like you to talk to the school nurse tomorrow."

 _NO_ she thought. It could not be. It absolutely couldn't. And if she went to the school nurse... "There's no reason, _I can't be,_ I'm almost _16!_ I didn't present, I don't have any symptoms..."

Mr. Walker's facial expression changed to something like pity. "Rey. I'm a Beta and _I_ can tell. Your neck glands are visible."

She touched the place that had been so itchy on her neck all week. "It's a _rash!"_ she cried.

Mr. Walker wordlessly opened a drawer on his desktop and pulled out one of the mirrors they'd used to demonstrate light refraction. He tried to hand it to her.

She didn't want to touch it. If she touched it, she'd have to look. She might have to see....

"Rey, being an Omega is not the end of the world," he said, concerned. "There are a lot of services avail--"

Rey ran out the door.  
  
  


* * *

Rey just ran. A panicked sprint down the floorwax-smelling hallway, out into the scorching afternoon, the chainlink campus fence a blur beside her, faster, faster out of the parking lot, into the desert between school and town, gasping for air as tumbleweeds flashed past, letting hot wind push her _away_. She ran through the broken-up parking lots of the old Dairy Queen and the empty video store, flying over the blacktop of a strip mall, then past another strip mall, and another, past the elementary school, through the dirt park on Petroleum Street, into the desert again. She turned some small amount and ended up near houses again, in the nice neighborhood where the engineers lived, dropping into a slower pace, but still fast, still _fleeing._ She was thirsty and had left her backpack by Mr. Walker's desk. She had to go to work, too. But she couldn't, couldn't go back to Unkar's if she was really presenting, if a _Beta_ could tell what she was. She could go no place familiar. That would be _danger._ She was carrying the mark on her now, she knew Mr. Walker wouldn't have lied. He'd probably seen hundreds of Omega girls in his classes, knew what it looked like when someone was presenting.

She'd spent the day before cleaning her RV from top to bottom. Her _nest._

The itchy neck. The red marks on her wrists.

There were so many ways an Omega could present, and she'd just ignored the signs. She hadn't _wanted_ to know. And not-knowing wasn't going to protect her. It would get her _taken._ It would get her _trapped._

She kept running, but slower, just fast enough that her gasping breath drowned out the worst of her thoughts, the ache in her legs drowning out the terror in her body. She left the nice neighborhood for scrub-land again, passed a gas station and a used car lot, ran past dead-end streets, smelled the rotting-carrion scent of the town dump, got further, further from what she knew, until she did know this neighborhood again, and feeling sick, she took the empty street with its scraggly, poisonous oleander bushes, down the long dirt driveway, to the place where "Jane Smith" once got her mail. At the end of the driveway, she saw flashes of yellow in front of just more desert, and realized that they were ragged, ancient scraps of police tape attached to a fence, flapping in wind that blew over a bare concrete slab. She stopped, sucking in lungfuls of hot air, seeing with stinging eyes that the shack she'd burned, the one that was a little house once, a little dream, was just... gone. There was a blackened perimeter of charred, scattered wood around the scraped foundation, but whatever used to be the house was obliterated. At least there was that.

She picked up her feet and pushed herself away from that memory as well. Her long legs stretched out, the muscles in her hips and thighs feeling winglike, her arms pumping to help shove her along through the air. She passed the refinery that stank of poisonous death as evening dropped into the sky and turned the metal buildings a tragically beautiful palette of oranges and pinks. She passed the drugstore and dashed in to suck what must've been a gallon of water out of their drinking fountain, then left the air-conditioned danger of the browsing people. She had to keep going. And she had to... figure this out. She had to do _something._

It got darker, then dark. She ran toward the sunset, then turned around and ran toward the moon. She ended up back in the nice neighborhood, aching and slow now, and in desperation found a house with no barking dog and drank a long, hot drink from its front garden hose. She made another loop around the town, circling, trying to think: what would keep her _safe?_ She thought of hitchhiking away, and knew what happened to Omegas who hitched--one Alpha driver and she'd be done for. She thought of a thousand things, rejected each one, and kept circling back to maybe just running and running forever into the deep desert until she curled up in the sun and died.

No. She wouldn't. Not that. Not yet. Not until she had to.

When dawn took the place of the sodium arc of the streetlights, she found herself back at school, harboring an idea that likely would fail, but perhaps not as spectacularly as the other 999 ideas would have. She hid in the scrubby bushes while the janitor unlocked the gym, then took a quick shower, put on one of the spare sets of clothes she kept in her locker, and ran away again, but this time just the couple of miles to the Planned Parenthood and Omega Health. PPOH didn't open until ten on Fridays, so she climbed the scrubby Mexican bird of paradise tree outside and hid among the outrageous, tasselly magenta blossoms. If this tree were a person, she was sure, it would be an Omega. Ludicrously obvious in its fertility, showy and gorgeous and vulnerable. Fragile, bursting with pollen. Easy to break.

But as she sat clinging close to the trunk so she didn't snap the relatively skinny branch she was on, she looked down at her own "limbs," her legs, hanging below her. Her legs looked strong, not fragile. There was nothing fragile about her, nothing lush or curvaceous. Boys didn't like her body, she knew, because she was corded with muscle, because her legs were cut and powerful and looked stronger than any boy's in school. They were thin, like this tree's branches, but flexible and tough. They took her everywhere.

Her heart was sick with emotion and anxiety, but her mind was still restlessly chewing on her problem. Maybe she could still, somehow, hide. If an Omega could have legs like this, she thought, if one can have a body that was powerful like hers (and like Padme Amidala's, she tried not to think), a body that wasn't soft and buxom and pampered-looking like all the smooth-haired Omegas' at school, maybe there was some _other_ way to be an Omega, at least for now.  
  
Maybe the omegagen in her system would destroy everything she was--maybe it would pump out the pheromones that would give her away, maybe she'd grow big bouncing bosoms that would make it practically impossible to run. Maybe she'd lose all her muscle tone and put her weight into wide, fertile hips. Maybe all she'd care about was which Alpha boy on the football team might want to mate her after Prom, or maybe she'd even decide to give the disgusting old Alpha man at Helica a call and let him whisk her and Unkar off to Pakistan, of all places.

 _Or maybe she wouldn't._ Maybe for a little while longer, she could run, and run, and run, and keep being herself. Padme didn't get found out until she was 22, after all. Maybe she could hide it better, and longer, maybe forever, because she knew what was happening. Maybe there were drugs she could take, maybe she could wash herself five times a day like the Muslim kids who brought their prayer rugs to school. She could certainly wear scarves for the rest of her life, to muffle the scent. Maybe she could even still dream of living how she wanted to live, of being an engineer, which she now knew was what inventors usually were. Maybe she could still be Finn's friend, maybe she could put herself through college somehow, with scholarships and racing money.  
  
Maybe this curse would slow her down until she was just some sickening slug swollen with a ten-pup pregnancy, grinning idiotically at the drooling rich man who'd stuck his thing in her and bit her neck, but _maybe it wouldn't_. She'd put off presenting at all, by some miracle, for four long years. She'd gotten four more years of herself. Maybe she could have more years, maybe she could still hide what she was, somehow, and she could live.

She suddenly remembered a day in the cafeteria with Finn last year, when she'd asked him how he hadn't just given in to the First Order and done whatever they'd wanted.  
  
"I decided I wasn't going to give them anything that was mine that they didn't take from me," he'd said. "Whatever it was, even if it was just my own thoughts, I wouldn't give it up first. I'd be me until they beat it out of me, and then I'd just be me again after I healed up. Otherwise, you might as well be dead. You might as well give up."

She was going to hug Finn for that, someday, if she still could.

* * *

By the time the first car pulled into the clinic's dirt parking lot, Rey knew what she had to do. As the little Honda steered into a parking space and its owner got out, Rey swung down out of the tree and brushed the bits of bark off her scratched hands. Her heart was pounding and she was trembly-sick with nervousness, but she wasn't depressed, wasn't suicidal, still had hope. She smiled anxiously at the short woman in scrubs who exited the car and approached the locked glass door with her keys out, and asked, "Excuse me, hi, um, I know you're not open and I don't have an appointment, but something happened and I really, really need to see someone."

The woman looked her up and down with the kindest possible expression on her face, and said, "Honey you come right in. I'm gonna turn on the lights and all while you fill out your forms, and the first nurse who gets here will squeeze you in."

Rey practically collapsed with relief. She followed the woman into the waiting area and took the clipboard she was handed. She saw, right under "Patient Name" on the form, "Insurance Plan Number." More adrenaline. "Please, I'm so sorry, I don't have insurance. Or any money on me. But I can pay in payments, I promise, I'll get a job that pays, it might take a while--"

The woman, who'd put on a tag that read "Barbara Ann: Assistant, Omega" said, "Sweetie, you don't need money. We bill patients who can pay and ones who have insurance, but our sliding scale starts with zero dollars, if that's whatcha got. That's what I had the first time I was standing where you are--zero dollars and about nine cents in my pocketbook. Fill out the information you can and then read a trashy magazine. It'll make your brain hurt less until someone comes in to take care of you."

Rey smiled through suddenly wet eyes and whispered, "Thank you."

The woman put a gentle hand on Rey's shoulder and squeezed. "We're gonna help you. You'll get whatever you need that we can give you. Just rest now."

Rey filled out the forms, skipping, among other boxes, the Designation box, the Parent or Guardian's Name box, and the Home Telephone Number box. Under Reason for Visit, she wrote, "Might be presenting as Omega."

When the door opened the second time, it was 9:40, and another soft, short, round woman came in the door. Rey smiled at her, too, with watery eyes. The rule for dealing with adults in power (outside of the junkyard), was _make them like you:_ smile, be polite, charm them if you can with what a nice, smart girl you are.

The woman looked at her knowingly and said, "I'll be with you as soon as I can," before disappearing through the door to the back rooms.

About ten minutes and half of a _People Magazine_ later, the door swung open and Barbara Ann called her back. Rey stepped into a slightly institutional-smelling hallway that had half a dozen doors on each side, and went into the room she was pointed toward. The other little woman was sitting by a tiny desk with a clipboard in front of her, and gestured for Rey to sit on a normal chair, not the big slab of a table that loomed in the back of the room. Rey had never been in a medical office before and she looked around with wonder at the anatomical diagrams, the big flower posters, the mysterious red plastic box on the wall that simply read, "SHARPS" (sharp whats? she wondered). The cheapness and immaculate cleanliness of all the furnishings was strangely reassuring. She dried her sweaty hands on her shorts, and the woman, whose tag read, "T. Jones, RN, Omega" simply asked her, "Rey, what can we do for you today?"

Rey chewed her lip and said the words that she'd prayed, literally prayed, to a god she didn't believe in, never to speak: "I might--there's a chance--that I'm presenting. As an Omega."

If the woman, T. Jones, was surprised, she had a good poker-face. "And why do you think that?" she asked.

"I've been feeling... different. And I thought I was getting a rash, on my neck and wrists, and my face felt itchy, and then someone said... my teacher said... that he could see my neck glands. But I'm 15! It's too late! Isn't it too late?"

The woman nodded and said, "I'm very glad you came in. I understand why you'd feel confused. May I have you sit on the table, and then would you allow me to examine your neck? I'd put on gloves and touch just the sides of your neck."

Rey instantly liked being asked permission. This, she saw, was a safe place. They didn't demand money, they didn't assume, and they _asked permission._ She carefully climbed up on the table, looking worried when the paper under her wrinkled and tore a little. "Oh my gosh, your paper, I'm sorry--" she started.

"It tears for everyone and gets tossed after every patient. It's just fine. OK, here are my gloved hands," the nurse said, holding them up. She went on, "I'm going to touch your neck and press on the area where your glands would be if you were presenting." The nurse looked closely at her neck and gently massaged the dense tissue where Rey had felt so itchy. A rush of _something_ seemed to go into Rey's bloodstream. It felt good, but strange, like it was a suddenly little harder to breathe. The nurse seemed to be wearing some pleasant perfume, like lilacs but not cloying. Rey couldn't remember the last time she'd been touched by a woman. Maybe an elementary school teacher. Maybe not.

"I like your perfume," Rey ventured, in the spirit of _make them like you._ "Is it lilac?"

The nurse stepped back from Rey slowly, as if not to startle her, and said very gently, "That's actually my natural Omega scent. You can smell it so clearly because you're definitely an Omega, too. Your glandular tissue is pronounced, your own scent is very faint, but established, and I can see from the slight redness on your wrists and facial sinuses that..." The nurse slowed as she saw Rey's tears. She went on slowly, "--that you're well advanced into presenting." She wordlessly handed Rey a whole box of tissues and pulled a little wastebasket over to the floor beside the table. "You seem very upset," she said. "Would you be willing to tell me why?"

Now Rey had to do it. She had to carry out her plan. She let herself sound almost as scared as she actually was. "I can't let anyone know I've presented. I can't go into heat. I live in a place that's safe right now and I don't want to leave, I really, really don't want to leave, but some Alphas live nearby who would be really dangerous if I went into heat. They're a weird religion and they're really scary about Omegas."

"Do you want to call the police?" the nurse asked. "If you're not safe at home, I'll have to call..."

"Please, no! _Please!"_ Rey said, almost panicking. "I want to live where I am. I just... No one can know. Can you make it so no one can know? What I am? _Please?"_

The nurse leaned back against the countertop and said, "I'm absolutely going to help you, but there's only so much we can do, at least here. I can give you a birth control implant and an ongoing course of suppressants today, plus boxes of pheromone-neutralizing body wipes, a bottle of pheromone-neutralizing shampoo, and some other products that can help. I'll also send you home with enough emergency heat blockers to keep you from going into heat for three days if you feel a breakthrough heat coming on, but then you're likely to have a very hard heat, so you'll need to go to a safe place until it passes. That could be at the local Omega safehouse, which I'll give you a pamphlet about, or it could be somewhere else of your choosing. We have a free 24-hour hotline to help you decide what to do if it happens. As for hiding that you're an Omega, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that it's impossible to completely conceal Omega status. Even with the strongest doses of suppressants and neutralizers, your glands are your glands and they'll be visible for the rest of your life. But there's something that might help you. You look very athletic. Are you highly active?

Rey nodded through her tears and blew her nose. "I run a lot, every single day."

The nurse smiled. "That's probably why it took you so long to present, and that's excellent news. Very high amounts of daily aerobic exercise dramatically reduce pheromone emission in Omegas. It also reduces risk of breakthrough heats. If you exercise hard enough to be out of breath, for two to four hours per day, three days a week, your scent will probably stay the way it is today, which is so faint that it can barely be detected, and could easily be mistaken for something like scented bodywash or hairspray. It will also make it more likely that your body will keep looking athletic instead of, well," and she smiled, "like Barb and me."

This was _amazing_. This... this was exactly the news she'd needed.

"Wait, is it because I'm skinny?" Rey asked, mind racing. "Do I need to eat less, go on a diet?"

The nurse shook her head. "Absolutely not. It's the exertion, not the level of body fat. You should keep yourself as well-nourished as possible. You won't be able to keep up the strength you'll need to exercise this amount if you don't eat like a horse. We think it's evolution's way of telling Alphas that you're in an emergency migration and can't commit your resources to a pregnancy."

Rey laughed. She was on the verge of jumping up on the table and dancing. "I can do that. I _have_ to keep running anyway. I have to. And now I can. Thank you so, so, so much."

The nurse smiled and said, "I'm so glad that will work for you. I really am. I know it can be hard, but being an Omega can be a beautiful thing, if you can create the right circumstances for yourself. I absolutely have faith you can do that someday, but for now, I'm glad you can reduce your risks." Then she turned to get into a cabinet behind her and pulled out some little white boxes. "These are your suppressants. I'm sending you home with six months' worth. PPOH only has access to Supprex, which works well for most Omegas. It's typical to have some uncomfortable symptoms, like irregular periods and headaches, for the first three months, but if you find that they're a problem, you may need to go to a for-profit clinic to get a different prescription."

Rey nodded. She'd find a way if she had to, but she could live with just about anything for this miracle.

The nurse said, "I recommend that you take one right now, and then I'll inject your implant. Are you sexually active?"

Rey vigorously shook her head. "Nope. And not gonna be. Maybe ever."

The nurse absorbed that with that same calm neutrality. "That's fine. If you change your mind, though, the implant doesn't protect against sexually transmitted infections, so you'll still need to use condoms." They went on talking in that vein for some time, about the various products Rey would be going home with and the need for a PAP smear on her next visit, while the nurse prepped and then injected the surprisingly painful implant.

Rey left the clinic at 10:05 with the implant site on her upper arm smarting and the adrenaline in her system slowly breaking down. She had to get a notebook or something, she knew, to track her exercise throughout the week so she didn't slack off. If Mr. Walker would still talk to her after she was so rude, would still train her, she would do whatever it took to be an ultrarunner, and she would _live._

* * *

Rey arrived at school in time for fourth period. She fidgeted her way through the day, practically bouncing with the need to see Mr. Walker--and with her next major source of anxiety, what she was going to face when she returned to Unkar after having not shown up for work and then having been out all night. She scribbled out possible solutions during class when she was supposed to be doing other things, coming up with nothing particularly believable. When the bell rang at the end of eighth period, she let it go and sprinted for Mr. Walker's classroom, figuring she'd deal with one problem at a time.

She got back to Mr. Walker's classroom while kids were still spilling out, and she stood in the hallway like a rock in a stream of salmon, letting them flow around her. After all the terrified waiting she'd done already in the past 24 hours, another wait was exhausting. _She_ was exhausted. The adrenaline of the endless night and morning hadn't fully worn off, but her entire system felt depleted to the core, as charred as the moat of burnt wood around the abandoned house's foundation. As the last kid ducked out of room, Rey sidled in, her heart in her throat. Mr. Walker was cleaning his whiteboards while glancing out the windows on the opposite side of the room. She purposely squeaked one of her sneakers on the linoleum to get his attention. He turned her way and his face instantly relaxed with relief.

With _relief._ For _her._

 _"Rey,"_ he said, and immediately dropped his eraser back onto the board's aluminum rail and approached her. "Are you all right?"

She ducked her head a bit and stepped back. "I am so sorry, Mr. Walker, I... it was very rude of me to--"

He stopped her. "You have nothing to apologize for. I was so worried about you." He looked at her with warm, concerned eyes. "Really, are you all right?"

She nodded. "I was just kind of shocked. I'd thought I was a Beta all this time... and I've never wanted the, um, problems that come with being an Omega."

Mr. Walker looked very compassionate, as if he was imagining something about her that probably wasn't precisely true, maybe that she'd known an Omega rape victim or something. "I completely understand. I held onto your backpack for you. I hope you didn't need it for anything."

She shook her head, and then blurted out, "I still want to talk with you about training, if that would be OK?"

His eyes lit back up again and he nodded, then gestured her to the chairs they'd sat at before.

"I went to a clinic this morning and got suppressants, and the nurse said that if I kept running, that if I ran two to four hours a day, that my scent would be suppressed, and that I might not develop the Omega body type. So that's good. That's what I want--" she saw that he was looking at her with some consternation. "--for now. I want to keep focusing on school and running, instead of boys."

His face relaxed again.

Adults were so easy to lie to sometimes. It was really sad.

She continued, "And I want to try running ultras. I want to win."

Mr. Walker smiled with some humor. "Well, OK. I had a mentor once who said, 'There is no try, there is only do or not do.' So let's talk about what we're going to do. I had some time to think today about your situation. I think I know how you can train for hills and altitude without leaving Jakku, and get a project ready for the next science fair at the same time."

"Really? I mean--oh my gosh, that would be brilliant. I... can't take much time away from my work, though."

"You mean your work for your guardian?"  
  
She nodded.  
  
"You won't have to," he said. "If you're going to do this, you need to focus the training time you already have on improving your hill abilities, learning good running form, and acclimating to altitude. That means no more running to and from school."

Rey felt frustration bubble up in her. What did he think, that she could _teleport_ to school, that someone was going to buy her a Mercedes and driving lessons? She started to open her mouth to explain, for the ten millionth time in her life, that _no,_ she couldn't just get a ride, when Mr. Walker said, "I'm going to drive you to school and drop you off after."

Rey felt her jaw slowly drop, like an elevator approaching ground floor. She blinked without saying anything.Fear filled her. Was there a catch? Was Mr. Walker a creep? Why else would someone, a _man_ , an _adult_ do something like this for her? She stopped herself before she physically shied away from him, but he just kept going.

"It's actually no trouble. I live on Desert Tortoise Road, a couple of miles past Brown Road. It's on my way. You can run out to the corner of Brown Road and the highway, like you usually would, and I'll pick you up at 6:45. That's later than I usually come in, but it will still give you time to train before first period. Does that work for you?"

_Shit shit shit..._

"Actually, I usually come in earlier, so that I have time to take a shower after I run. Could we just come in as early as you normally would?"

"Well, that's 5:45, so--"

"That's fine," she said firmly. "I'm a real morning person." Rey had no idea if she was a morning person or not--she'd never had the chance to try being anything else--but at least now she wouldn't have to explain that school was the only place where she had access to a shower. "Can I ask about the project?"

Mr. Walker said, "Big trail ultramarathons are hard for a lot of reasons. There's the distance, the difficulty of running on trail surfaces that are covered in rocks and roots, the steepness of the slopes, and then there's the elevation. The races with the biggest prizes are mostly above 10,000 feet, some with sections over 14,000 feet. At elevations like that, the average person has trouble just walking around for a few minutes. You're going to need to run at those elevations, on incredibly steep, uneven surfaces, for more than 24 hours at a time, at an even faster pace than you're doing here. I think you could create a setup that would help you prepare for at least the slopes and the lack of oxygen that you'd encounter, if you were resourceful."

Rey nodded rapidly, ideas already flickering through her imagination. "I'd need... at least two systems. The surface and the air, right? Steep, rough surfaces, and low oxygen levels." Mr. Walker was nodding along with her, saying nothing, letting her think. "I'd need to know how steep the slopes would be, and the kinds of surfaces I'd be running on, and the amount of oxygen in the air. And the distances I'd be training--wait, no, the distance would be just--I'd want a treadmill, normally, but it couldn't be a normal one, it would have to be bigger, or just taller, way taller, so that's back to the slopes and the surfaces, those would have to be... I need pictures. Mr. Walker, I need to see the slopes and elevation maps, and... I'm sorry, I need the computers in the library for this."

Mr. Walker actually _smiled,_ probably the second time that expression had been on his face in the entire time she'd known him. "That's fine, Rey. The county science fair isn't until March, so you have plenty of time, but be sure to keep within your abilities to actually create what you come up with. Why don't you work on your ideas this coming week, and tell me what you come up with next Friday after class."

"But when can I start training?" She was suddenly _wild_ to start. The idea that she could start racing soon, start making enough money to leave Unkar--

 _Unkar._ Her heart sank. She was going to be in huge trouble when she got home, and she was so desperately tired already, from running all night, from not sleeping, from being scared every single second since Mr. Walker had said the word, "Omega." From everything.

Mr. Walker said, "If you can start tomorrow, I can start teaching you the best form for long-distance running in the morning."

Rey shook her head. She knew what was coming. There was no excuse that would make Unkar not punish her. She didn't know how bad it would be, but it might be... bad. She might not be able to move much for a few days after. And she needed to sleep and rest for a while, after last night. "Could we start on Monday?"

Mr. Walker nodded. "That's fine. Are you ready to go home?"

 _Oh._ He was going to give her a ride _today._ Wow. For real? She checked her gut. There was literally not one thing creepy about him, except that he was an adult man being nice to her. And that was suspicious, right? Right.

"Oh, you don't have to do that, Mr. Walker, really, let's just start on Monday."

"Rey, you look very, very tired. You've been through a big emotional upheaval. If you want to do your run today, I understand, but that ten miles seems like a long way right now."

Rey was so burned out. Her feet and legs, if she paid attention to them, were in agony. She was starving, and she really, really wanted to lay down. Was she endangering herself, by riding with a Beta male teacher? Probably. But she just didn't have enough energy to care.

"OK. Sure. Thank you."

* * *

When Rey limped into the scrap yard, a few minutes fresh from Mr. Walker's old, but air-conditioned Camry, there was some kind of commotion happening near her RV. She barely had the strength to drag herself there, but there was no avoiding it. Unkar, Pete, and the other two guys who worked the scrap yard were out there, and she saw that they'd dragged her blankets and the cushion from the bench in her dining nook out into the dirt. The cushion was ripped open and the blankets were in a heap. Her little potted plant, the one she'd found on a sidewalk with a "free" sign on it, that she'd just gotten healthy, had been tipped out on the ground, its dirt spread. Pete was flipping the pages of her textbooks, as if they might have cash between them, and Unkar was pawing through her small laundry bag, where her _underwear_ was.

Rey felt herself... split, somehow. There was the exhausted, beaten Rey, that one who had just been shoved bodily into the possibly ruinous world of Omegas, who had run all night and barely eaten, who now could hardly stand, and who already was seemingly being horribly punished for her misdeeds. That Rey would hide until she'd thought of some mewling excuse for why she was out overnight, beg them to stop, and curl up to wait for Unkar to stop beating her.

But that part was left behind. There was another part that lifted and expanded like the petals of a rose at dawn, and it _snarled._ She strode straight to Unkar, the leader of the pack invading her nest, and yelled, "What the fuck are you doing to my house?" as she ripped the laundry bag away from his hands. One of her little bras was still in the bastard's grip and she demanded, "Get away from my things, you _pervert!"_

Unkar was short but incredibly strong from working the scrap yard. He looked gobsmacked for two long heartbeats and dropped the bra, then Rey saw him jut his jaw and flare his nostrils, and she stepped back as he lunged at her. His massive left hand swung up to smash into her face as he bellowed "Little _whore--"_

Rey simply ducked back, realizing for the first time in her life that she was actually _much_ faster than he was. He stumbled forward, then recovered enough to bellow at the other three men, "Get her, _now!"_

Without thinking, she slipped away from Unkar again and toward the weakest of the men who'd started to circle her. "Lowood!" she yelled. He looked startled, but kept coming toward her. "The cops are gonna love hearing about you selling meth out of your van, 'cause that's what's gonna happen if you don't back me up. Either I tell them or my best friend tells them if something happens to me. He's got his instructions. Five years in jail or help me out, you pick."

Lowood halted, looking at her like she'd grown a mouthful of black fangs. He worked his toothless jaw then said, "Rey, pet, we was jest--"

Unkar kept lumbering and lunging at her. She danced away, quick and smooth as Padme Amidala, and yelled, "YOU CHOOSE, LOWOOD!"

Lowood, looking miserable, sidled behind Unkar this time, looking useless but at least standing in the right place to help her. "Unkar, jest hold up a min--" Lowood started.

"Goddammit, knock her down!" Unkar yelled at the other two.

She darted a glance at the next weakest one as Unkar swung wide at her again. She stayed quick on her feet, all the aching pain gone. She snapped, "Sammy, your greencard's expired and you have child porn on your phone! You wanna be deported or shanked in prison? You pick, 'cause the cops are gonna find out all about you, too!"

Sammy's walleye twitched and he backpedaled, getting out of both Rey's and Unkar's striking range, his hands up in the surrender position. No one _ever_ talked about what was on Sammy's phone. "Don't want no trouble, luv," he said, and tossed away the tire iron they'd probably used to pry her padlock off the RV door. 

Rey started toward the dropped tire iron, but Pete, that disgusting traitor, was shambling toward her, obviously so high he was practically floating. Unkar circled behind her now, and as she pivoted to track him, Pete got a little too close and grabbed at her with his oil-blackened hands. She scrambled to push him off, and Unkar closed in. She could smell his week-old sour sweat as he caught her T-shirt sleeve. Rey dug in her heels as Unkar dragged at her, letting him rip the sleeve right off. The tearing sound was shocking above the heavy breathing and grunts. Rey fell backward as the scrap came away in his hands, almost into Pete's arms, but Lowood, amazingly, was pulling Pete away and whisper-shouting something at him. Rey hit the ground on her tailbone and Unkar dove for her, catching her by the hair. Agony split her scalp and she scrabbled at his hand, trying to get it off. His fingers just tightened, so she got as far up as she could and punched at his chest and gut. He was so well padded that nothing seemed to hurt him, and he pushed her back to her knees, yelling something about when he told her to work that she'd _work._  
  
He yanked her head to the side, and her glands must've gotten very visible, because he said, "Now I see what you're about. You're a little bitch now, aren't you? Are you going into heat? Were you out rutting all night?" He yanked her face toward his crotch and reached with his free hand to catch her jaw. "Now it's time for you to earn your kee--AAAaaUGH!"

He'd let that hand come too close and she'd bitten it with all the strength in her jaw, feeling her teeth punch through the thinner skin on the blade of his palm and sink deep. He instantly released her hair to clutch the hand, and when she dropped to the ground she scooped up a fistful of sand and flung it directly into his bugged eyes. He howled and she darted for the tire iron. Pete and Lowood were now standing well back, not helping either fighter, and Sammy was just gone. Rey grabbed the tire iron and suddenly didn't know quite what to do with it, because one hit with it could easily be a killing blow. Unkar was staggering around, shielding his eyes with his badly bleeding hand. The vulnerable places on his body now shone like beacons at her-- _face, neck, balls, joints, shins--_ and she decisively stepped into position to take a careful swing at his crotch. She connected with a satisfying _thud_ and he gagged and clutched himself, groaning. He tilted like a squat tower hit with demolition charges, knees collapsing first and then his whole torso thudding onto the sand. Now he was bloody and helpless, squirming in pain before her. If she'd wanted to she could've smash his brains in. But she wouldn't. She wanted freedom, and for once, that meant staying _right here._

Keeping well out of his reach, she shouted, "Hey!" to get his attention.

He moaned and blubbered something like _you little bitch I'll kill you._

"HEY!" she repeated. He flopped toward her like a beached elephant seal, reaching a big flipper toward her foot. She swung the tire iron at his elbow, really putting her back into it this time, and connected. He shrieked and his entire body twisted with pain.  
  
She held up her weapon like a golf club and said, "You want me to tee up on your skull? Yes? No? _No?!"_

He finally garbled _"No!"_ as he curled around his broken arm like a cooked snail.

"Then it's time to listen!" she barked. "This place is illegal seven ways to Sunday. Unless you want me and my friends and my teachers to go to the cops with all the evidence I've been collecting for the past _ten years_ on you, you'll give me exactly what I want."

Unkar just lay in the dirt, saying nothing, which was a start.

Adults were so easy to lie to sometimes.

It was really useful.

"First, you ever touch my RV again, or any of my stuff, you go down. Second, Sammy's gone and his wage is mine, same hourly and overtime. You cheat me one penny and you go down. Third, I get two days off a week, every week, when I say. Fourth, I get whatever parts I need for my projects, for free, as payback for all the free work I've done for you. You double-cross me, you send anybody after me, if someone _breathes wrong_ in my direction, you go down and all my Alpha boyfriends come visit you in jail. If something happens to me, my friends send all your shit to the cops, every file I copied, all your cooked books, and the copy of your hard drive I made. Is that crystal clear?"

He squinted at her with bloodshot eyes, taking in this monster she'd become. He started to sneer at her, then got a good look at her ferocious expression, and nodded sullenly.

Still staying out of his reach, she looked at Pete and Lowood, who were staring, agog, at her like she'd become Satan floating in her own personal cloud of brimstone. "Lowood, you help keep him in line, yeah?" she said.

"Aye," he gasped.

_"Pete."_

He said, hands out, "Listen, blossom, I didn't mean harm to you, just wanted to keep m'job and--"

She stopped him, still brandishing the tire iron. "I'll say this once. You laid hands on me today. You do it again and the next time you gouch out, I'll take the cutting torch to you. Got that?"

Pete, who'd taught her to use that torch when she was still missing baby teeth, turned greenish under his grime. She took his head drooping forward in horror as a nod yes.

"Now you get him out of here," she said, firm as a governess. "I have your mess to clean up."

Lowood and Pete warily came forward and helped Unkar lever himself off the ground. He was covered in dirt and blood, and he didn't even look at her as they half-dragged him away. Rey brushed her teeth then started numbly hauling her things back into the trashed RV. She left the little plant to die where it lay. It wasn't until she heard Pete's car start, probably to take Unkar to the hospital, that her tears started to leak out, and she didn't curl in on herself to sob on her clean floor until they were long gone. That night she ate every scrap of food in her cupboards, triple-locked the door from the inside, and then slept like the dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened in the violence scene: Unkar tried to attack Rey and get his workers to help him do it. She in turn threatened each of the workers, who were hapless, petty criminals, with exposing their specific crimes to the police if they didn't help her instead, and said that her best friend would do it instead if something happened to her. Each guy except Pete, the one who'd taught her to weld, gave in to her. Unkar grabbed her with Pete's help, but another of the workers convinced Pete to stop. She fought off Unkar and injured him with a blunt object, then told him she had demands. 
> 
> BTW: "Gouch out" is a term for a heroin addict getting so high that they nod off into a kind of half-sleep. It's mostly a British term.
> 
> Also, women taking the field at ultrarunning and other super-endurance events is, to me, one of the most exciting phenomena in modern sports. My favorite recent win was in January 2019, when veterinarian Jasmin Paris won the 268-mile Montane Spine Race in the UK and shattered the course record by ****12 HOURS**** WHILE EXPRESSING BREAST MILK FOR HER BABY at aid stations. Another one I love was in August 2019, when cancer researcher Fiona Kolbinger won the 2500-mile Transcontinental Race (a cycling race from Bulgaria to France) by more than TEN DAYS over her closest competitor. There are dozens of women competing at the very top of their sports in running, swimming, and cycling, and they can teach us a great deal about the nature of biology and women's strength.


	12. Allies

2012

By the time 5:45 on Monday rolled around, Rey was ready to see Mr. Walker again and go back to school. She was so used to hiding her inner world that she didn't even consider telling him what had happened with Unkar. She was practically bouncing, however, to tell him the outcome of it. When the old white Camry pulled up to the corner where she was waiting for him in the pale, sage-smelling pre-dawn light, her first words, after "Hi," and "Thank you so much for the ride," were, "I have good news!"

"Do you now?" Mr. Walker asked as he steered back into the highway's sparse traffic. "While I'm driving, perhaps you could tell me about it."

For a moment, Rey just savored the experience of being in a car for once. She so rarely rode in one that it was kind of a marvel, watching things fly past so fast, Plutt's street retreating so quickly behind them in the mirror. Then said took a big breath and said, "I made new arrangements with my guardian. I'm getting two days off a week so I can race and train, I'm going to get paid more for my work so I might be able to afford more of what I need for training, and I can have free parts to make my training system."

Mr. Walker glanced sideways at her as he drove. "Well, that's wonderful. I'm glad to hear he's not so unreasonable after all."

 _Adults..._ Rey thought with secret disgust. She simply smiled and said, "I guess so" in the most innocuous possible tone.

"Does that mean that you also want to join the track team or cross-country?"

She shook her head. She'd thought of this. "I still have to work, so I can't practice on their training schedule. And besides," she let a grin touch her face, "track meets don't have $20,000 prizes."

Mr. Walker smiled a little and twitched back his head, as if he'd chuckled without letting any air out (probably the closest the man ever got to really laughing). He said, "I'm going to let that pass as long as you apply for every academic scholarship you have a hope of getting. If you don't get a full ride to the college of your choice, it's not going to be on me."

That was what Rey was counting on--digging in hard now so she could flee later. Maybe in her own car. _Definitely_ in her own car.

Mr. Walker seemed to think of something. "You just said that you can have free parts to make your training setup. What kind of parts are you talking about?"

Rey steeled herself. She had big plans for this training machine, and there was no way she could hide the source of its ridiculous number and variety of parts from Mr. Walker. "My guardian's business is Plutt's Scrap and Tow. So, pretty much anything."

He narrowed his eyes. "You've been working in a scrapyard?"

Rey used the reply that always seemed to redirect adults from this question. "It's the family business." _If family meant one filthy pervert and someone who is absolutely not his daughter._

"Ah. I see," he nodded.

_Bingo._

"Are you ready to start working on your running form?" he asked.

Rey very much was.

* * *

It was six by the time they walked out to the school's dirt track together, Mr. Walker with his stopwatch in hand. First, he watched her run a few 6-minute-mile laps, and then he timed her on her fastest mile. The results were about what she expected. She could do a single mile in a little under 5 minutes, but couldn't begin to keep that up for any length of time. ****

He said her form was actually quite good for an untrained runner, and that her "gait tempo," whatever that was, was actually spot on.

"But now," he said, "I'm going to teach you an ancient technique that uses the forces that are already within you to make you faster and more efficient. It might take a while to learn, but after a while it should become practically effortless, and it's the form pretty much all champion runners use."

"But it's an ancient technique?" Rey asked, jumpily digging her feet into the track's clay. "I thought ultra-running was new, like... snowboarding or something. It's not an extreme sport?"

Mr. Walker looked a little put out. "Running has been humanity's main form of transportation for our entire history. It's only ever been little pockets of high technology users who've forgotten that. A hundred and fifty miles south of us on the Mexican border is an indigenous community who say they've been running ultras since they came to this continent, at the beginning of where they count time, which was probably 10,000 years ago. Their men's _fun run_ is about 100 miles and the women's is 70, but only because they want to make it fair for the runners who have to get home early to breastfeed their babies. And they do it while _kicking a wooden ball through canyons._ So, no," he frowns, "not like _snowboarding._ Now stand right here." He gestured beside one of the splintery supports of the bleachers.

"You have to use your body's energy as efficiently as possible to endure over very long distances," he told her. "This form recycles most of the energy you expend, if you do it right. Now, holding your body straight, lean diagonally until you're resting your shoulder on the post, like this." He demonstrated. It was like the world's least exciting planking.

"Straighter," he said, when he saw that she was drooping in the middle. "Pull your lower abdomen in toward your spine."

That was uncomfortable and super-weird, but it straightened her out like a board.

"Now, holding that inner muscle tone, stand back up." She did, feeling constrained and uncomfortable. 

"Now, imagine that you're holding in your arms a ball that's five feet across. Pull it into your torso and curve yourself around it. Arms and pelvis curl around it too, like so." He did it first, then dropped his arms, and she could only see the tiniest remaining differences in his posture. She followed his verbal instructions because there was practically nothing to see. This also felt weird and stiff.

He looked critically over her posture and added, "Now tuck your chin a little. More. Less. Good. If you maintain this posture while you run, with your core strength still engaged, it will recycle the kinetic energy of your arm swings through the tendons of your spine and automatically rotate your pelvis, so that your arms' energy helps swing your legs and vice versa." He jerked his head toward the start line painted on the track. "Take a slow lap, with most of your attention on keeping that posture and relaxing your hip and shoulder joints."

She did, and it felt terrible. Weird and slow, with the standing-straight-upness of it. However, it felt like... something. She could feel her shoulders somehow rotating her pelvis forward and back, swinging her hips, and if she relaxed her hip muscles a little, her pelvis's swing would just pull her legs forward into the next step so that she didn't have to do it with muscle. She made it around the track and Mr. Walker started jogging beside her.

"Now," he said, "Keep your posture, but lean forward as you run, like you did diagonally against the bleachers."

She leaned, and found herself speeding up without meaning to.

"Good," Mr. Walker said, huffing alongside her. "Lean more."

She was suddenly outpacing the old man, and she experimentally leaned further. Her feet started practically flying out to land in front of her, dropping into place so fast she had to work to keep up with them. She made one loop around the track, and Mr. Walker waved her forward to do another. As she ran, he'd occasionally yell from the sidelines about straightening her neck or loosening her fists or something while he had her do three more laps. It was nearly 7 a.m. by the time he gestured for her to stop.

"How does it feel?" he asked, as she slowed, panting and jogging in a little circle around him to cool down.

"Harder. I had to think about it the whole time. But like I might get faster."

"It will get easier, and it was definitely more efficient. Let's get ready for class. We'll meet out here after 8th period and I'll teach you more of it."

"That wasn't it?" _Ugh._

"No, you still have a lot to learn, kid."

They met again that afternoon, and he walked her through more pieces of what he told her was called Force Running. Her knees had to come up much higher than was comfortable, and her feet had to swing in an almost perfect circle, like they were on bike pedals. It meant that just the big muscles of her quads were driving her along, not the weaker muscles of her calves. She needed to keep her elbows bent a bit beyond a 90-degree angle, so that the weight of her elbows was what was swinging her arms. That made sense because it made her arms feel so light. The only other thing that made her a little excited was that unless she was sprinting she was supposed to land right in the middle of her foot, not on her toes or heels. Once she tried that, she could feel how landing on her heels had actually been slowing her way down, the impact jarring her all the way through her skeleton and acting like a brake on every step. Landing on her "midfoot," as Mr. Walker called it, felt great. The rest of it, though, felt wildly foreign and left her huffing and panting after even a short run.

When she told Mr. Walker that, he clapped her on the shoulder and said, "That's a good sign. Change is uncomfortable. If it was easy, it would mean you were doing it wrong."

"Do I have to run like this all the time?" she asked pathetically.

"Do you want to win?"

"Yes."

"Then yes."

Over the following few days, Mr. Walker added more pieces to the puzzle of her running. Most of them seemed to make running way, way worse. She was supposed to only breathe through her nose unless she was sprinting or racing, which slowed her down so much she felt like a beached fish gasping her way along the track. She was supposed to focus her mind on her form, instead of watching the movies of her daydreams in her head, which made it super boring, and she had to add "speed days," which involved endless short, excruciatingly hard sprints with not nearly enough recovery time in between. Her speed workouts didn't take long, so to get her full two to four hours of aerobic exercise in, she had to lift weights and do core work in the stinky school gym after her feels-like-I'm-dying-of-suffocation-here sprints were done. So, one of the very few things in her life that she had liked now _sucked._

She told him that near the end of the week, in more polite terms, because _grownups,_ and he asked if it was worth it.

She hesitantly said, "If it makes me fast enough to compete--to win--it will be, I guess. It's going to get better, right?"

He looked at her seriously. "You're mature enough that I'm going to be honest with you. Some aspects of it will, once your postural muscles get in shape and your cardiovascular system improves. That won't take long. But other aspects will always be hard. They have to be. Speed work has to hurt if it's going to make you faster. But running ultras isn't just about physical capacity. If it was, just about any serious marathoner could run an ultra. Ultras are about inner strength, about creating the discipline and peacefulness it takes to stick with painful, boring training and an even more painful race."

Then, she had to ask: "Why do _you_ run ultras?"

He looked very sad for a moment, then very stoic. "Because it gives me peace, and when I run, my mind stays entirely in the present moment."

She just nodded empathetically, but knew somehow that something truly terrible must have happened to him, to make him choose to do all this so that he wouldn't think about his past. She didn't ask, though. She had her secrets, and she sure wouldn't push him for his.

* * *

  
  


Rey was used to hiding just about everything about herself, even from Finn. She could talk with him about a lot of things--anything happening in their classes, her dreams for the future, all the weird emotional politics of high school--but never her home life, and never the dark secret that she always carried with her. She'd learned to be good at seeming to be authentic and vulnerable while revealing nothing dangerous. Now, though, she had to tell him at least a few things about this bizarre week. Her life was going to be so different now.

He'd been out sick since Friday with an ugly cold, so she hadn't even had a chance to tell him about what had happened when Mr. Walker had wanted to see her after school on Thursday, much less all the craziness of Friday. Now he was finally back, on Wednesday. He didn't know anything, so when she slid into the seat in the cafeteria next to him that day, she had to prepare herself. She wanted desperately to tell him about the brawl with Unkar and the shop guys. Desperately. But she knew she couldn't, because if Finn mentioned it to his parents without thinking, or to any kid who mentioned it to some adult, she would get taken away. That _could not_ happen right now. So, she stuffed that desire, like so many she had, down the wormhole inside, and let it go. Instead, she focused on what she could say, must say.

After asking him about how he was feeling _(meh, fine, it was no big deal)_ , she whispered to him, "I have news. I have so much news you won't believe it."

"Girl, tell me the whole thing," he said, dunking a handful of pale fries in an obscene amount of ketchup and downing them.

She braced herself and took a deep breath. "So, you know how Mr. Walker asked me see him after school about my running?"

He nodded around his mouthful, swallowed, and said, "Yeah, which you could have told me about Thursday night if your crazy guardian would let you talk to me on the phone."

"Right, yes, but listen!" she said, squirming in her seat, "I told him about how much I run, and how fast, and that I've already done some pretty long runs, and he wants me to run ultramarathons. He thinks I could win bloody huge amounts of money doing it."

"What?!" He set down his little carton of milk. "Wait a second--first of all, that's nuts, because those are like 100 miles at one time. How are you going to run 100 miles?"

She wanted to say, _I probably ran 100 miles on Thursday night because I was so scared, Finn, so scared I'd get found out..._ but of course, she couldn't.

She said with the exact appropriate level of excitement, "Well, loads of them are only 50 miles, and I've actually done that before, on an errand for Unkar. I told Mr. Walker that, and how long it took, and he said he thought that if I trained the right way, that I could actually win races--and not just the women's prize, Finn, he thinks I could beat the Alpha males and take the whole purse."

"What?" His face scrunched up skeptically. "That's not real. Women can't compete against Alpha males--nobody can compete against Alphas. That's why they're _the Alphas."_

She shook her head. "No, no, Mr. Walker said there's something about extreme endurance sports that takes away Alphas' advantage. Like, Alphas are so big that they get tired at those distances, and they don't have enough endurance or something. That Alpha and Beta women have been the top ultrarunners in the whole world sometimes."

"Oh man, for real?!" he asked. "Seriously, there's a sport that Alphas lose at? If it didn't sound like total suck I'd be running right alongside you. I'd love to kick some Alpha ass with my hot little Beta feet." He threw an arm around her. "But I guess it's gotta be your hot little Beta feet, huh Peanut? Do us B-sides proud?"

She swallowed. Finn obviously still had some hangups about designation. This might not be easy.

"That's another piece of news. Really big news, actually." She squeezed the hand that Finn had slung around her shoulder, then unwrapped his arm from her and held his hand in her lap. She gripped it to say, _Please, please don't go away when I tell you this, please, please stay here._ "I found out that I'm not a Beta."

Finn's jaw dropped, and he recoiled just minutely, and she let go of his hand. That _hurt._

"You're an Alpha," he said slowly. _"Shit."_

"What?!" she squawked. "No, I'm not an Alpha! Why would you say that? I'm an Omega, weirdo. Look." She swept her hair, for once not in a ponytail, off her neck. She knew her glands, with their unmistakeable oval shape, were now visible to anyone who looked.

"But..." Finn faltered, "you're all... skinny and muscular and not-short. How the heck are you an Omega?"

She only had one answer to this, that maybe it had to do with her being an Anassa, so she said instead, "It's probably from all the running I've been doing since I was a kid. The nurse at the clinic I went to for suppressants said getting a lot of exercise makes Omega hormones not come out as much."

Finn narrowed his eyes, wrinkled his nose, and leaned in to her. He whispered, "Do I have to start calling you ma'am?"

She smacked him with her empty paper plate. "No! Geez, cultish much?"

He grinned. "Good. 'Cause if _I_ had to call you ma'am, _you_ were gonna have to wear one of those long dresses with the high neck and poofy sleeves, like in the old place. And big hair. It would not have been a good look for you." He was silent for a moment. "Does it feel any different?"

This was where it got more tricky. Rey pressed her lips together before she spoke. "A little. I thought at first that it would be really bad, that I'd have to turn into, like, Becky Turnbull or something," she said, referring to the giggliest, boy-craziest, curviest Omega in the school. "But actually, I think I feel a little more confident in myself. Like, I did this crazy thing that I'd never have thought about doing. I told Unkar that I deserved to be paid like anyone else, and that I deserved to have days off of work like anyone else. Not that it was bad before or anything," she hastily fibbed, "but now, I'm going to have actual money and free time after school."

"Are you telling me that you can buy your own phone and come hang out at my place?"

She grinned as big as she ever had in her life. _"YES!"_

She hadn't even thought about those things, she'd been so busy thinking about things like running and buying food.

He grinned, his same beautiful Finn-grin that she'd loved since the first hour she'd known him, and said, "OK, I may be an atheist now, but that's a miracle from Him on high if I ever saw one." He slung his arm back around her shoulders, and offered her one of his ketchupy fries. She leaned into him, and nipped up the fry, filled with joy.  
  
  


* * *

Rey was used to being more than one person. For a long time, she was both Rey Who Lives at the Scrap Yard and also the person she was at school, Weird Rey the Good Student. That Rey was, yes, Weird, but also definitely did not live in an illegal situation with a gross guy who hit her and made her work a man's job. Then she was those two things, _plus_ Rey the Secret Anassa, and that was exhausting and distracting in whole new ways. Now, Rey Who Lives in the Scrap Yard _also_ had to be Rey Who Will Kill You if You Look at Her Wrong, which was not a super-easy pivot and somewhat difficult to keep up. At home, she was used to slinking around while doing as she was told, always on high alert for Unkar's ire. Acting like someone who had strategically outmaneuvered him _and_ beaten his ass in a physical fight was something entirely new. Trading glares and passive-aggressive bulletin board notes with him and then otherwise ignoring him--very unfamiliar.

What she had to say to him were mostly things like, "U: R's days off are this Monday and Saturday" and "Acetylene and propane getting low, need more by Tues."

He usually said this kind of thing to her:

BITCH: PARTS TO PULL  
Kenmore 4498-4 wash. mach. motor (by north fence, leave the electronics)  
John Deere Lawnmaster IV riding mower axle and blade  
2001 Celica GT window crank motors, front 2 (from SILVER ONE, NOT RED ONE)  
2010 Tacoma Crew Cab wiring harness, alternator, speedometer assembly, distributor cap  
2011 Focus O2 sensor & mass airflow sensor (ENJOY GETTING THOSE OUT, SLUT)

On her very first timecard, he also scrawled. "Buy your own bloody chow."

The hardest part of it, though, was being a foreigner to herself. The incident at her RV profoundly disturbed her. It had been so sudden, so explosive, and so short. Unkar had done awful things to her in the past--beaten her, sold her bikes, sent her on sadistic errands through midsummer heat that could easily have killed her. She had just curled up inside and lived through those things, trying to never make the situation worse by disobeying.

This... this _will_ that had come thundering through her when she saw that they were hurting her home, this willingness to manipulate, willingness to strike back, willingness to dominate... it was terrifying. She knew in her heart where it had come from (the RV was her den now, not just her living space, and female animals defended their dens), but how did it all fit together? Where was the meek little Omega, the most Omega possible of all Omegas? In her place was some Valkyrie who had shattered Unkar Plutt's elbow, manipulated a grown man into switching sides in a brawl, run a pedophile off the job, and threatened to light a junkie on fire. It was so materially unlike her and what she had imagined an Anassa--or even a regular Omega--to be that she didn't know how to act or think. She kept replaying the fight in her mind, as if she chewed on it long enough she could integrate it into her cells. She finally came to the same conclusion that she had come to in the tree outside the clinic: that there must somehow be more than one way to be an Omega, and she was, as usual, being the weirdest one.

* * *

By Friday, Rey's running was feeling marginally better, and she had some very ambitious plans for her training machine project. When Mr. Walker's car rolled to a stop in front of her that morning, she greeted him with the usual thanks and pleasantries, and then blurted, "Can I show you my sketches for my project?"

He didn't exactly smile, but there was definitely a twitch under his mustache. "You sound enthused. Why don't you tell me about it while I'm driving?"

"Well, I did a lot of research this week. I thought I should do a survey of California ultramarathons first and then pick one to model my training on."

Mr. Walker nodded with his eyebrows raised and lower lip out in that, _Impressive, young grasshopper..._ way.

"I looked at twenty races, and then picked the Western States 100."

"The birthplace of the modern ultra," Mr. Walker interjected approvingly.

She nodded, "It's classic. So I got the terrain map of the race course, and a bunch of pictures of people running it, plus all the elevation data. I figured out what the lowest and median atmospheric oxygenation levels are, and I thought I'd shoot for training somewhere in between at first, instead of jumping right into the lowest level." She looked at him for approval. He simply nods.

"So, I think I've done all the drawings for the terrain thing, but not the oxygen thing. There are these things called hypobaric chambers, right? Where people get sealed in and they sleep in them to simulate being at altitude?" Mr. Walker nodded. "So, those things are like $23,000, and I wouldn't have a place to put one anyway, and I want the low-oxygen to be while I'm running, right?

Mr. Walker looked amused. "Right."

"So, instead of a whole chamber with low pressure, I think I could make a machine that separates out the oxygen from the air, mixes back in the amount that I want, and then feeds the mixture to me through a mask or, or, those nose plug things."

"Canulae."

"Canulae. Right. I could get almost all the parts for it. The guts are just a rolling diaphragm on a wet-sealed Turner-Jennings compressor, which we've got like five of at the scrapyard, plus a couple of pressure gauges, two air tanks, some connectors and hoses, and a custom-welded sheet metal case."

Mr. Walker's eyebrows were going up again in that worrisome way. "Rey, that sounds very complex. I'm sure you could accomplish a great deal with help from your guardian, but you know you'd have to do all the work yourself for it to qualify for the science fair?"

Rey's jaw clenched at the insult. _Calm calm calm calm calm,_ she thought over the hum of the engine.

"I can do all that bit myself." _Nice, calm voice. Good._

"Including the welding?" he asked in an _I'm calling your bluff_ tone.

She nodded, realizes he was still looking at the road, and said, "Yes" in a tone that was perhaps slightly less nice than she wanted.

"Where did you learn to weld?"

"One of our employees taught me." _When I was 11, you jerk._

"And what about the--"

"Mr. Walker," she broke in, unable to stand it any longer, "if I took the Welder's Union journeyman test today, I would pass. I'd also pass the Professional Machinists' journeyman practical exam. I can't take them 'til I'm 18, but I would pass today."

"How do you know that?"

She wanted to scream, but she had to be _nice_ because _nice_ girls get things.

"Because when I was learning, I did all the exercises in the test prep books until my samples were perfect. At the scrapyard, we have a full machine shop, and oxy-acetylene torches and a propane rig, and a MIG welder and a TIG welder. It's a _family business."_

"OK," he said, in a tone that meant he didn't 100% believe her, but would let it go for now.

That wasn't good enough for her, if they were going to do this. "Mr. Walker, did you believe me when I first told you about how much I run?

"Honestly, no."

"Do you now?"

He nodded. "And you're saying that I should believe you again?"

"Mmhm."

He sighed and looked resolute, and said, "I apologize, Rey. I must have sounded very condescending. You're an unusual person."

"Thanks," she murmured. That wasn't something she felt thankful for, but she would take the apology. They'd arrived at the school and were sitting in the parking lot. "Can I tell you about the problem part of it?

"After all that, I'm supposed to believe there's something you can't do?" He was obviously being snarky with her. She ignored it.

"I can't program the sensors for the oxygen extraction machine and the remixer. I'd need to buy chips for them and then learn COBOL for one and FORTRAN for the other. That's going to take weeks."

Mr. Walker smiled. "One of the most important principles of design is knowing when to build from scratch and when to use what's already available. What do you think the rule is for using things that are already available?"

Rey squinted a little as she thought about it. She thought she should say something about learning for herself and all that, but... "Honestly, whenever something's already available, use it, unless you're just trying to learn. It takes me, like ten minutes to pull something out of a car that it would take me a year to build from scratch."

"Is it important for you to learn programming right now?"

"Nope."

"Then you don't have to build a portable hypoxia machine--they already exist on the market, and I know half a dozen runners who'd lend you one."

"Are you kidding?" Her mouth dropped open. "I'd take such good care of it, I'd keep it here at school..." she said in a rush.

"Good. I'll make some calls. Now, let's look at your drawing."

"It's actually drawings, plural" she said, and pulled out her binder.

She leaned across the car's center console and rested the open binder against the steering wheel, spreading out the pictures inside, leaving three across the binder, putting two on the dashboard, and one on her lap.

Mr. Walker furrowed his brow skeptically as he looked at them. It was a spread of technical drawings, better than many adults could make, showing what looked like a cartoon Rey running on a very tall, triple-wide treadmill with some kind of uneven surface on the belt.

"This," she said, picking up the drawing in the center of the binder, "is the whole setup. It's a modified treadmill, but it works more like an escalator. The terrain has to vary, right? Like a lot? One second you're running on a practically level gravel road and the next minute you're on a rock staircase and climbing around roots. I can't get fast on technical trails if I'm just running on a smooth belt. So, there are these panels..." and she showed him a second drawing. "They're all different sizes and have different things bolted or welded onto them. Pieces of pipe cut in half to feel like roots, chunks of metal to simulate sharp rocks, and things like rubber mats and shag carpet to simulate rough and slippery surfaces. They interlock once they're on the belt, and they have these bars on the back here that these hooks on the belt catch onto. Aaaaaaand here's the belt." She showed him a third drawing, not of a belt, but of a set of four chains side by side, with short metal hooks extending from some of the links at regular intervals. There was a ratchet mechanism where the hooks connected to the chain. "The ratchets lock the panels in place based on how heavy they are, so I can do different steepnesses just by varying the width and weight of the panels. The belt picks up the panels from this bin, here, at it turns, and locks them in place. I run on them, and once they go behind me, they drop off the belt hooks back into the bin. In the bin is this other belt that runs off the same circuit, and it randomizes the panels so that I never know what's coming next. If I want to do just regular speed training, I can put on, um, here, this regular track, which is some normal treadmill belts stitched together.

Mr. Walker looked a little dumbstruck. He shook his head, "I have no idea what to say. This... this is much more than I expected. I thought you'd just want to use a hypoxia machine and body weights on a normal treadmill. This is far too ambitious. There's no way you can construct this, it's--"

He shut his mouth when he saw the look of frustration on her face. "Sorry." He rubbed his face with one hand. "You really think you can make this thing? Every single aspect of it?"

She nodded firmly. "Definitely."

"Should I just ask how long you think this will take?"

"I think about three months to build the prototype and a month to refine it, since I won't have to build the hypoxia machine. That gives me four months to use it and another month to write up my results."

"Your results?"

"Well, I'm going to be experimenting on myself, aren't I? Seeing if it increases my cardiovascular fitness, speed, and endurance?"

"Okay," said Mr. Walker, seeming a little poleaxed. "I just need to get my head around all this. This is really not what I was expecting." He sat silently for a minute, then said, "If you're actually going to be using this thing, you're going to have to follow the national and local science fair rules for human subjects testing."

She bit her lip, suddenly very worried. Rules usually meant lots of restrictions.

He said, "Don't worry too much. The only relevant one is that you're going to have to have a scientist in your field, which in this case would be sports medicine, to sign off on the machine before you use it, and then periodically monitor your progress during the experimental period."

She actually started _chewing_ on her lip. "How do I find a sports medicine scientist?"

"I know exactly who you should use. I have an old friend who came out here to retire in the dry heat, but she got bored and reopened her practice. She's still probably the best sports endocrinologist in the world, despite the fact that she's 90-something. She'll do it as a volunteer."

He pulled out his flip phone, which Rey didn't know even existed anymore, and scrolled through his contacts. He hit the call button and she heard ringing on the other end. 

A woman's voice, tinny over the line, said something with three syllables.

Mr. Walker fiddled with the volume so that it was set old-man high. Now Rey could hear everything. He said, "Maz, I told you it's just 'Walker' now."

What?! Mr. Walker had a different name! Her crusty teacher had a mystery?

"Right, right," an old woman'd lightly accented voice groused. "You can hide who you are, but not from me. I assume you need something. Desperately. Let's get to it."

Mr. Walker covered the phone with his hand and mouthed to Rey, "She's a little colorful." He uncovered the phone and said, "Maz, I have a student athlete here who's required to have a sports medicine mentor for a science fair project she's running on herself. I thought you--"

"A science fair project? Why don't you ask that whelp over in Palm Springs who tried to poach Michael Phelps from me? Waste _his_ time."

"Hey, the student is sitting right here, and I wouldn't have asked you if this wasn't a special case." He said in a lower voice, "She's an Omega, and I think she may be on her way to becoming a world-class ultra runner."

Rey's heart thrilled at that. _World-class._

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Rey could hear her pulse beating in her ears. Five seconds passed, then ten. Mr. Walker started to open his mouth, probably to ask if the doctor was still there, when she snapped, "Bring her to me this afternoon. 4:45. I'm leaving for the Bahamas for a month tomorrow so I don't have time for shilly-shallying."

Mr. Walker gave a pleased nod to Rey and said, "Will do, Maz. See you at 4:45."

There's a click on the other end, as the doctor hung up without saying goodbye.

Mr. Walker just smiled. "We'll go straight from practice. And speaking of practice, we missed your morning practice. The bell's about to ring."

They hurried toward their respective classrooms, Mr. Walker carrying Rey's drawings with him to review over lunch.

When Rey came back to the physics lab after 8th period, a wall of Alpha scent hit her even before she got through the door. Half a dozen big men were in the room, all gathered around Mr. Walker's table, talking quietly about something laid out there. She hesitated in the doorway until Mr. Walker saw her and called, "Rey, come in. I've been telling some other teachers about your design during the breaks, and they all wanted to take a look at it. Rey, this is Mr. Gunderson, the auto-shop teacher, Mr. Phillips, the Computer Aided Design teacher, Coach Broderick, Coach Tassen, Mr. Bray, who teaches Chemistry, and Mr. Barnes, who teaches computer programming. Guys, this is Rey Niima."

She gave a little wave. "It's nice to meet you all."

There was silence in the room as the men all stared at her. A couple of them took a step closer to her, a couple stepped back, and most of them put their hands in their pockets or crossed their arms. Something was wrong. What was wrong? Rey looked worriedly at Mr. Walker for help, but finally, the last one he'd introduced, Mr. Barnes, broadened his stance a little and said, "Joke's on us, isn't it? Walker didn't tell us that this genius engineer kid named 'Ray' was a girl."

That seemed to break the spell and the other men chuckled and started moving again. A few of them said, "Hi Rey."

One of the coaches said, "So, Mr. Walker tells us that you did all this without help. How'd you manage that?"

She looked at him, puzzled. "Do you mean the drawing part? I used colored pencils."

The coach, Broderick, she thought, chuckled. "Well, the drawings are very good, but the mechanisms. Your dad must be quite a designer."

Rey could _feel_ her face flush red. Her gut knotted and got both hot and icy at the same time. This _sexist pig_ and the rest, they were going to gang up on her and say she was a fake, that _Unkar_ did her designs for her _and and and_ Mr. Walker would--

"Jim, I have every reason to believe Rey came up with the entire design herself," Mr. Walker said calmly.

Rey looked at him in shock.

He was defending her.

A man

Was

_Defending_

Her.

He hadn't believed her himself this morning, and now.... He gave her a tiny, bright-eyed nod.

Rey felt like she'd just gotten a benediction from the Pope. She gave a tiny dip of her chin right back, took a deep breath and gazed up to meet the coach's eyes. She said in a voice that was not exactly her nicest one, "My father is not in my life. My guardian didn't help with any part of this project. He hasn't even seen it. He did make sure that I was trained in our family business, which is mechanically oriented, though, so I'm confident I can build this without help."

The coach looked taken aback, raising his big, stupid Alpha hands in front of him. "No offense, little lady. You're just full of surprises is all."

She suddenly remembered Finn once saying, "'Sir' is a very useful word for saying, 'I'm being polite, unlike you, shithead.'"

"Sir, my name is _Rey."_ She smiled a hard, calm smile.

Dead silence.

"Did you have any other questions about my designs?"

The auto shop teacher hurriedly said, "OK, _Rey,_ I'd like to know how you plan on coordinating all the motors you've got here. If you don't get the timing right, you're going to have a big mess on your hands."

"More like under her feet," one of the other teachers dad-joked.

Suddenly, the room could breathe again. She smiled, this time for real. "Timing is the right word, actually. The starter mechanisms are all wired to one ignition switch, so they'll start out coordinated. The backup is an actual timing belt from a Ford F150 that I'm attaching to these gears here, here, here, and here," she says, pointing at one of the cutaway drawings, "so it should coordinate all the chains. It'll be exactly the right length if I space out the motors right."

The teacher tugged one of his brushy sideburns for a second and said, "What would you think about a timing _chain_ instead, like the ones on a Chevy 350? Walker says you can weld. You could hook a few together and it would be a stiffer linkage, and easier to run through a gear set.

She thought about it. "If I did, I could use the gear drives from the engines I pulled the timing chains from instead of machining my own gears. That would save me, like, a week of work!"

The other coach, the not-proven-to-be-a-pig-yet one, leaned eagerly over Mr. Walker's desk. "You were gonna machine your own gears? What kind of a milling machine ya got?"

By the time the teachers had finished grilling her over design details, hobnobbing with her about tools, admiring her drawings, and commiserating with her over the difficulty of working with machines, they'd totally used up Rey's practice hours and it was time to go to the doctor's office. Mr. Walker shooed them out of the room and clapped Rey wordlessly on the shoulder. He gave her another nod, this one clearly saying, "You did good, kid."

She gently gathered up her drawings, clicked them back into their binder, and followed Mr. Walker out to his car.

When they pulled up to the big house on Mary Anne Street, Rey's knee was bouncing with nervousness. Mr. Walker raised an eyebrow at her and said, "Don't worry about Maz. She's good people, and if she hassles you, just remember how you talked your way through that barrelful of alphelone I accidentally dumped on you this afternoon."

Rey grinned. Mr. Walker was weird, but good.

When they stepped onto the porch of the house, Rey saw a shiny wooden box with what seemed to be a doorbell and speaker on the front of it, with a big brass plate that read "M. Kanata, MD, PhD." In the three lines below, it also said, "Past President, American Medical Society of Sports Physicians," "Past President, American Academy of Endocrinologists," and "Fellow, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists."

Rey doesn't know much about medicine, but she thinks being a doctor of all those things is not the usual thing. She'd think about it more, but the name, M. Kanata, was ringing a bell for her, and she couldn't quite remember from what. Mr. Walker pushed the doorbell button and the speaker made a staticky sound, then the old woman's voice bellowed, "Back in the office!"  
  
The door _clicked_ , and Mr. Walker opened it.

They stepped inside the house, which was cool, dim, and cluttered with dark wood furniture that looked imported from all over the world. Mr. Walker lead them through a huge living room and then down a long hallway lit with half a dozen skylights and decorated with thick silk rugs. At its end was an open door with light streaming out of it. It was a clinical room that had an exam table in it, some incomprehensible tubes and stuff hanging from the ceiling, a treadmill, a very, very fancy looking exercise bike with wires and leads draped all over it, plus a small couch, a chrome and leather rolling stool, and three or maybe four computers and monitors.

Seated on the rolling stool was a tiny, tiny woman with a round face and huge glasses. She practically bounced to her feet, standing all of 4'8" or so, and stalked toward them, all business. "All right," she said without preamble, "Let's see what you've brought me, _Walker."_

Mr. Walker sighed and she gestured for them to sit on the little couch. When Rey sat down, the little woman approached her, taking a deep breath to start interrogating them.

Then she stopped.

Just stopped.

Her nostrils were flared and her wrinkled mouth was open just a bit. Her hands drooped down to her sides, and then rose, very slowly, to press into a prayer position in front of her heart. Her mouth closed, then opened again as she looked searchingly at Rey's face. Then she glanced at Mr. Walker, took in something about his expression, and her mouth snapped shut.

"Good," she said firmly to him. "I like this girl. Now you leave."

"Wha--"

"Out. This is my patient. You can't be here while I examine her."

"Maz! She's not your patient! She just came here to talk about her project, and you don't have her guardian's permission to treat her. I--"

"Fine, she's not my patient, she's my _mentee._ I will now mentor her, and you will get us milkshakes at the Tastee Freeze. Here." She reached into her slacks pocket and pulled out a battered leather coin purse and thrust it at him. "Don't spend it all."

Mr. Walker stood up, still protesting. "The Tastee Freeze is all the way across town! It'll take me an hour to--"

"Oh, too bad," the doctor exclaimed, physically pushing him out the door with her child-sized hands. "Then you must stop at the market for a bag of ice to store them in on the way back. I DON'T WANT MY MILKSHAKE MELTED!" she yelled as she slammed the door behind him and flipped the lock.

Rey was frozen in her seat. She knew exactly who this was.


	13. Rey's Life Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy holidays, lovely folk. I might not be able to publish tomorrow, so here's a present for you. And, for those eagerly waiting for the ship to sail, Ben and Rey meet again in the next chapter!

2012

Masia Kanata, Padme Amidala's best friend and greatest defender, stood in front of Rey. Rey's fists were clenched tight and pressed together, her toes were clenched in her shoes, she'd been found out, this woman _knew,_ but it was _Masia_ \--

"Child," Maz said, "I'm sorry about all that fuss. But I am here now to help you." She moved to Rey and hopped up slightly to get onto the couch beside her. She rested one hard, wrinkled hand on Rey's clenched fists.

She gazed at Rey, who felt tears trembling right on the edge of her lower lids. "Do you know why we must talk alone?" the old woman asked.

Rey nodded twice, and the tears spilled.

"Darling, darling!" Maz exclaimed, and threw her little arms around Rey, pulling her into a tight hug. "Your secret is safe here! You cry those tears! You must have so many reasons for them." Then she whispered, almost to herself, "I never thought I'd see another one of you again."

Rey felt a gush of relief as hard and hot as if it were blood. For perhaps the first time in her life, let herself cry in another person's arms, cried huge, gut-wrenching sobs. Maz stroked her back as Rey wept, petting her hair, pulling her in even tighter when Rey wrapped her long arms around her. When the drooling and snot-river started, Maz grabbed a handful of tissues from the box beside the couch and pulled away just long enough to put them in one of Rey's hands. Then she gripped her again and let her cry more.

When Rey was sobbed out, maybe 20 minutes later, Maz gently released her and smoothed Rey's hair back from her wet face as Rey wiped herself up.

"I'm so sorry--" Rey started.

Maz immediately cut her off. "You have nothing in the world to be sorry for, child. You have come to a place where your secrets are safe, where you are safe. There is no sorry here, not for you."

"How did you know about what I am?" Rey asked, still sniffling.

The old doctor gazed at her with ancient understanding. "That you are an Anassa? Let us use the word, here in this room. Let us not fear it. I knew because when you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people, and when I looked at _you,_ I saw the desperate eyes of my beloved friend, Padme Amidala. That," she said, tapping her own nose "and I _smelled_ you. You missed your workouts today, didn't you, runner girl?"

Rey gaped at her, horrified. "I did. Does it come on that fast? The nurse at Omega Health said I'd have a few days before my scent really started to..."

Maz nodded knowingly, "Ah, that nurse was smart, but she didn't know you were an Anassa." She shook her head. "I will tell you many things today, but the first is that you must never, ever miss your workout. If you do, your scent will rise up with the evening, when evolution says you should be having nice, relaxed, fertile sex, and give you away, suppressants or not. Here, get on the bike, you must work out as we talk."

Maz adjusted a knob on the seat post of the bike and stepped away for Rey to climb on. Rey sat on the bike, which Maz had raised perfectly for her leg length, and started pedaling away, fast enough to get out of breath while she breathed through her nose.

"Ah, good," Maz noted, and sat on her little rolling stool. "You know to go fast. Now, we haven't much time. Tell me how you have not yet been found out. You must have Alpha-Omega parents."

Rey squeezed the handle grips a little harder. "My parents are gone. They left me with a Beta man when I was five. I think... they must have known."

Maz peered at her closely through her cokebottle lenses. "Known? That you were an Anassa? No, imposssible. You're what, 15?"

Rey nodded.

Maz said, "There was no genetic test for it then, and no way to tell in a child without it."

Rey spun her legs faster. She had no idea what to feel about that. They'd just left her then for some _other_ reason?

"What about since you presented?" Maz asked.

Rey was panting, but puffed out, "I just presented last week, and I guess the running suppresses my scent. I've been running since I was six. And we live way out in an industrial district. There's nobody around at night."

Maz cocked her head at Rey. "Hmm. Impossible good luck if you ask me," It was was the first time anyone could have conceivably called her situation _lucky._ "I will tell you, I've studied your kind, as much as one can. There are so few of you, and there's so much ridiculous mythology out there that it's hard to know what is true. But some of the stories jibe with what I saw in Padme. I will tell you what I know, but it might be faster if you told me what you know first."

"I know about the scent being so strong that it would give me away," Rey gasped over the whir of the bike. "And that it would attract every Alpha within miles. That people would try to kidnap me. And the government would want to put me in custody. That people would try to buy me from my guardian. That if I mated somebody I would only be able to think about my mate and kids, that it would ruin me for anything else. I know it was so bad for Padme that she died of a broken heart."

Maz grimaced at that. "Oh no, you've read that horrible book. The rest was probably right, but forget that book. Forget everything about it except that Padme was a great woman who deserved the whole world and had it stolen right out from under her."

Rey blinked in startlement and panted, "Wait, then what did she die of?" 

"Childbed fever," Maz says flatly. "Her temperature went sky high the day after she gave birth and it cooked her brain. Happens all the time in shithole places like the safehouse the Polish rebellion had her in. They told me one minute she was holding her babies and the next she was dead."

Rey nodded. "The book said you became an OB because of it."

"Bah," she said dismissively. "That stupid man got at least that right. I tried it." She barked a laugh. "Turns out I didn't want to look at pussies all day long. First thousand are like, 'Oh beautiful flower, wonder of biology.' Then if it's not your calling, they just look like big tacos that want to bite you back." She made little snapping gestures with her hands at Rey, who couldn't help but guffaw a big, half-horrified laugh. Maz was obviously trying to make them both feel better. "It was sports medicine for me after that, specializing in the crazy hormones."

"Have there been any other Anassa athletes, or is it just her and me?"

"Ah, now that's an interesting question," Maz said, pushing on the floor to gently twist back and forth on her stool. "There are hints, in histories, of certain qualities that you queens have. One that shines through is extraordinary endurance. I take it Luke noticed you because you run a lot, and fast."

"About 150 miles a week," Rey said. "And pretty fast, yeah."

"Oh, girly! Well, then you are among a sisterhood. There are tales of Anassas who ran all night to escape from captors, and of course the births you are built for--the big litters--those make an ultramarathon look like a little stroll around the park. I used to think the endurance was because you had no choice, because the hardships you faced were so great. But now, with you at my door... well I can't help but think how like Padme you look--all long legs and muscle. You know, she was the hardest-working athlete I ever met. She was in the gym well before dawn every day, and she practiced alone late into the night. I think there was a reason why she could do this without injuring herself like us fools who tried to keep up with her did. You know the way anabolic steroids work?"

Rey thought about what she'd heard on talk radio at the shop. "They build more muscle when you work out?"

Maz shook her head. "No. They radically speed up recovery. Juicers like Lance Armstrong and that douchebag A-Rod tell themselves their wins are _legitimate_ because they actually do work out longer and harder and more often than anyone else. The only reason they can do that, though, is because the steroids let them. I think there's something similar at work among you girls."

Rey felt a little horrified and her legs slowed down. "Do you mean I'd be cheating if I raced?"

"No, no, squash that idea flat." She tapped Rey's nearest leg. "And speed up. I want to hear you breathing. Now, would it be cheating if you were six foot three, like that Pam Phasma girl who was the first woman to win the big ultras? You'd have a longer stride."

Rey shook her head no.

"How about if you were a gymnast like me and were a tiny little squirt? My height--or lack thereof--was a huge advantage because I could tuck into spins faster."

Rey again shook her head _no._

"So there you have it!" Maz cried. "You have a _natural_ ability that you have clearly cultivated the bejeezus out of. Padme couldn't have done what you're doing unless she trained just like you have."

Rey was relieved, and found herself with a strange yearning. "Would you... tell me about her?"

Maz looked at her understandingly. "Want to know what your sister was like, eh? Well, aside from the ability to work a normal person right into the ground, she was the kindest, most ethical person I've ever had the pleasure to know." Maz threw back her head in laughter. "I don't know why she and I got along so well!"

Rey couldn't help but grin back at her.

"She was ambitious," Maz continued. "Back then, we all took the winters away to train at home, and Padme, that girl got involved in politics, of all the things a woman was not supposed to do back then. She was head of the local Workers' Party at just 17 years old, and she was gunning for office by 18. I think she would have been the most amazing premiere of Poland. If she hadn't gotten that injury..." She trailed off, shaking her head.

Rey thought back, and said, puzzled, "I didn't read about any injuries."

"Oh, that's because that stupid _Phil Robinson_ made up half his book. He didn't know shit about why she got caught. She presented at about your age, but because we hardly ever took a day off training, no one knew she was an Anassa except me, because I was her roommate." The old woman's eyes grew distant as she stared into the past. "We guessed when that magnificent scent of hers started coming out on rest days and every Alpha within 20 miles would show up on the dorm lawn, getting in fistfights, not knowing why they were even there. God, it was like a medieval battle, broken teeth on the grass like somebody dumped out a case of TicTacs. That scent of hers was like an emperor's rose garden after a rainstorm, mixed with the promise of true love... it riled up the brain like no other Omega's, not even one in full heat. So we knew, and we knew the scent only came out when she hadn't worked out. We decided together, no more rest days for her, even if she had to break into the gym to get to the equipment. The older she got, the more her scent came out, though. By the time she was 21, her scent would always come out in the evenings, enough to cause problems, and then it would last all night, unless she was actively working out. She had maybe two hours in the night after a workout before it came roaring back. If she wanted to relax, we'd lock her in for 'early lights out,' with towels under the door and around the window frame. Mostly, though, she couldn't stand to be cooped up, so she'd go to the gym and work on her routines until she was ready to sleep. But then, when she was 22, right after the World Championships, the rope on one of the rings snapped while she was spinning on it and she broke her fucking pelvis." Maz shook her head disgustedly. "She was in a body cast. Trapped. God, we tried everything to keep her secret. I brought her arm weights from the gym to work her upper body with, and a punching bag. For a while, we had a bicycle frame bolted by its forks to the wall so she could use it like a hand-cycle. She was already so strong, though, that it wasn't enough. She couldn't get her cardiovascular system ramped high enough with just upper-body work."

Rey smelled the tang of fear in her own sweat. The implications were terrifying. "Was that even with suppressants?"

"Oh yes. She was taking double doses, so much that it was dangerous. It didn't matter, in the end."

"So, it's going to get worse? As I get older?" Rey asked, dread rising in her.

Maz nodded, her lips pressed together. "Every human body is different. But I think we must plan for that."

Rey was so relieved to hear the "we," that her head sagged for a moment. Maz had said it just like Mr. Walker had when he said they'd figure out together how she could train. "We" had been very good for her lately.

"What can we do?" Rey asked.

"Well, first thing, order pizza," Maz declared.

"What?"

"Luke's going to be back in about ten minutes, and we still have a lot more to talk about. Hold on." She pulled out an iPhone and tapped around on the screen. Rey heard the hum of muffled ringing on the other end of the line. Someone answered.

"Walker. I've ordered pizza for you to pick up on the way back. At Brother Ricardo Pizza." A pause filled with rapid talking, which she interrupted with, "Too bad. I already ordered it. One vegetarian deluxe and one meat lover's, both extra-large. They'll be ready in thirty minutes." She hung up.

Rey was puzzled. "Did you...?"

"Send him after a pizza order that does not exist?" She nodded. "Yes, I did. That should buy us another hour, at least. Knowing Luke, he'll sit around being polite until long past any reasonable time for the pizza to show up, then he'll have to order it and start all over again." She let out a deep breath. "OK, sister, let's talk about getting you some drugs."

It turned out that there are suppressants available for Omegas who had medical conditions that meant they absolutely must not go into heat. Rey's current medication, Supprex, was a low-dose concoction that Maz just snorted at. "No," she said, "that stuff's fine for little girls like I was. You need the big, elephant-gun version. Cancelapentin is what you're going to start taking."

"Is it really expensive?" Rey asked. "I don't have insurance."

Maz rolled her eyes. "Of course you don't. Ah well. But perhaps it's better that way. I don't want a paper trail saying that this professional athlete is using the stuff meant for heart transplant patients. Claims adjusters are nosy bastards. No, I'll just give you my quote-unquote free samples, six months at a time. Nobody in my practice needs the stuff, and yet the pharma reps still give it out like Candy Dots."

The emergency heat blockers sounded just as impressive. "Oestrodoxylate," Maz said as she pulled a white box out of one of the cabinets. She smacked the package against her palm and then shook the box at Rey. "We call these babies the Fire Hoses because they'll put your heat right out. They are military grade, used by spies and suchlike in the field. Use them only if you absolutely have to. They can cause sterility if you use them more than three times per year."

"Maybe..." Rey swallowed hard, "maybe that would be better. If I couldn't."

"Oh darling." Maz looked at her. "Do you absolutely not want children?"

Rey's chest contracted with a spasm of long-ignored grief, and her eyes suddenly felt wet again. She just pressed her lips together and shook her head helplessly.

"Ah, you do want them," Maz said, and stood to brush Rey's hair back as she continued pedaling. "Sweet girl. Of course you do. You would not be who you are if you did not want children. Being an Anassa is not a medical condition--it is your very being."

"But... I'll lose everything else if I have babies, won't I? I won't want to do anything else?"

Maz's brow furrowed and a look of stoic grief passed over her face. "I will tell you truly, I don't know. I was allowed no contact with Padme after she was mated, but that is the story, that mating and having babies is the big mind-eraser for you girls. Every person is different, though. And it may be that someday you will decide that the desire to have children is so great that you are willing to let go of other things, that you are ready for another stage of your life. You would have to go into hiding, though, if you did, as all the other queens do. You won't be able to control your scent while you're pregnant, and the knot-heads will start making terrible trouble for you."

Rey started spinning her legs faster. "I can't imagine that being worth it," she panted. "I can't imagine giving up _me_. I'm usually all I have."

Maz nodded empathetically. "Then until you are certain you wish to be sterilized or have little ones, you would do well to learn to mother in ways that do not require actual babies. That way you will not injure yourself by going too far against your nature. Your nature is beautiful, very beautiful, just as Padme's was. It was not the fault of her nature that her life ended so badly--it was the fault of her fool of a mate and our dumbfuck, sexist society. Indulge your nature just enough so that it doesn't twist inside you and hurt you."

Rey chewed on that. Mothering something other than babies. Then she had to ask, "What about boys? If I have to learn to mother without babies..."

"Then yes, until you are certain you are ready to risk a mating that might suddenly blot out all else in your life, you must learn to love without having romances, I suppose. If you want to be free."

"I do."

"Then I say, live as joyfully as you can while keeping your secret. Don't squash your feelings. Don't _act_ on them for god's sake, but if you have a crush, enjoy it in secret. Know what it is and take pleasure in it. Swoon a little. Cultivate fantasies of men you can never have." She winked. "Me, I like Tom Hiddleston. That young man is polite, he is well-educated, and he dances like he knows what to do with that pants-python he's carrying around."

Rey laughed with the little breath she could squeeze out, then nodded, still smiling. "Feel it but don't act on it. OK." Then she had another question. "Could I just... go on dates? Like lunch dates?"

"Ah, dates." Maz tapped he That is a complicated question. A lunch date sounds very casual, which is good." Maz rested her face on her little hands, thinking. "You must remember, though, that a date is not just about you. You must not lead people on, it would not be right. And you must, as long as you want to remain free, not cultivate romances. No, make many friends. Love them, spend as much time as you can with them during safe hours, but think very, very hard before you go on a date. Especially with an Alpha. If you spend cuddly time with an Alpha, you smooch him and let him sniff you up, or god forbid scent you, it will go to your head and make you all swoony for him."

"Would it make me go into heat?"

Maz sighed and rubbed her forehead. "I don't know. The Cancelapentin is designed to keep an Omega from going into heat even when they live with an Alpha mate who has gone into rut. But you are not just any Omega. Your fertility, your hormones, they are beyond anything that's been studied, much less had drugs designed for. You might never overcome the drug, or you might go into heat the first time you nuzzled an Alpha."

"And if I went into heat, then what?" Rey asked, needing to hear the answer she was already dreading.

"It would be the big bomb, the pheromone nuke," Maz said grimly. "You would probably have Alphas tearing each other to pieces to get at you, and Essentialists sending out their goose-stepping little militias by the squadron to find you. The only place you would be safe would be in a military-style lockdown. You would be in terrible danger."

Rey shuddered and felt sick. She had to forcibly push the images of carnage out of her mind.

"This is bitter stuff," Maz said. "Better ask me something funny. We need some funny right now, girly." ****

Rey felt herself blushing about what she was about to say. "This isn't funny, but I have to ask... I guess all this means no... doing it, like, at all."

"Doing what? Oh! Haha! You mean sex! Use the word, darling!" The mercurial little doctor threw her hands up in the air. "Sexy sexy sex! Have sex with yourself! Go to that Pleasure Palace shop on Paloma Street and get yourself some fun toys to play with. That is no problem. But if you have an afternoon delight with someone else, even with a Beta, you are more likely to go into heat. What the risk for an Anassa on Cancelapentin is, who knows? But garden-variety Omegas who remain virgins have only a quarter the heats that the ones who have sex with Betas do, and a small percentage of the heats that ones with Alpha partners do. For you, a nice knot vibrator would be the best lover."

Rey was both mortified and intrigued. Her experience with this sort of thing was nonexistent, and apparently had to remain very, very limited.

"There is one other thing," Maz said. "Speaking of Alphas, I have some theories about the Alphas who ended up mating with Anassas back when the poor girls weren't just sold off outright like they seem to be these days. They are, I think, very exceptional in their own right. I think it is not pure hogwash that they must be very strong for an Anassa to accept them, an Alpha's Alpha, if you will. If you meet a powerful Alpha you are very attracted to, be wary. Do not close your heart unless you must to keep yourself safe, but be very cautious. They may lead you down a path that has no return, whether they want to or not. Whether they love you or not."

"Like Vader did to Padme." Rey shook her head ruefully. "He couldn't have loved her."

"Anakin? No, no," Maz sighed, suddenly looking sad. "He loved her. He worshipped her, really."

"But how... could he have...?"

"Joined the Nazis when his mate was a Jew? Because he was a big dumb Alpha _fucker,"_ she said bitterly. "Brilliant, of course. Talented beyond all reckoning. But stupid. Stupid in the heart. Growing up in that postwar Lodz orphanage, he was practically a slave. After that, his deepest desire was to control his own destiny. And to be with Padme, of course, but when Hitler promised him all that power--the power to remake Poland to his own liking--the desire for control won out over the desire to see the reality of his path. Pfah! Stupid in the heart, that's what he was."

"So, she wasn't a status mate, like people say?" Rey asked.

"Oh no, he was no Essentialist, not back when I knew him. He was the opposite of that, when he was just a prodigy kid who had a crush on Miss Amidala. He was always talking about her strength, how he admired it. And sometimes I swear he acted like an Omega himself. He was a fantastic cook, loved to feed people, care for them, and after she asked for him during her first heat, he built Padme the most beautiful house you can imagine, out on a lake, made her the perfect den. He was hotheaded, yes, and he could Alpha command half a dozen people at once when push came to shove, but I never, never would have suspected he would become a Nazi, or an Essentialist. It was inconceivable."

Rey's slightly oxygen-deprived mind was blown. She'd never heard a tenth of this story, and it was polar opposite to most of _Padme's Heart._

Over the singing of the bike's mechanisms, Maz's phone pinged. She looked at the screen. "Ah, Luke is on his way, pizza and drippy milkshakes in hand. You got any other questions for me?"

Rey quirked her mouth. "About a million. But none I need answered right now."

Maz tapped the bike handlebars twice and said, "Then you keep pedaling while we look at this big machine you've designed, see if it's any good."

By the time Mr. Walker arrived, a safety harness with a hard-stop button had been added to the design, and the canulae have been exchanged for one of the neoprene VO2 masks in Maz's office. The mask would be horrible to wear, but it was the only way to accurately measure and control the oxygen she'd be taking in. Mr. Walker was highly disgruntled about having been sent away, but his attempts to cross-examine them were instantly quashed when Maz said that they had been talking about "lady genital business." He was mollified by the addition of mask and safety harness in any case, and took Rey to her drop-off spot by the scrapyard without asking too many questions. Rey was so overwhelmed that it took her a couple of days to wonder again about Luke's old name, and by then, she was so utterly absorbed with training and building her terrain simulator that she never considered asking him.  
  


* * *

Rey spent the next few months in a well of work so deep and flurried that she barely had time to lift her head up and look around. She ran in the desert outside the school grounds for two hours with Mr. Walker in the morning, the old grump now mostly riding along beside her on a creaky mountain bike, taking potshots at her running form and grilling her about physics topics. She still had lunch with Finn every day, and with her absolutely miraculous new salary, she now had a cheap phone with which she constantly texted him. After school, she ran or worked out for another two hours under strict regimens created by Maz and Luke, then went home and worked for Unkar for four hours. When the shop closed down and Unkar and his toadies left the yard for the night, she worked on the simulator. It was big--almost six feet wide and as tall and deep--and there was no way Unkar would allow it to take up space in the workshop, so she kept the all the parts on a wheeled pallet she cobbled together from the frame and wheels of some tweaker's smashed-up mini-truck. She had to haul it into the shop by hand, grunting with the effort of pulling it through the soft, sandy soil, every night.

In the shop, she put to use every skill she'd learned from Pete, tearing old machines apart for their motors and drives, joining together gearsets and panels, checking timing and calibration, wiring mismatched systems together, and machining new parts into existence from her own drawings and scrap metal. She made so many mistakes, so many time-wasting, stupid mistakes, that sometimes she wanted to cry. She used the wrong metal because she couldn't tell what alloy something was by looking at it, and her welds fell apart. She had to add little grease boots to her ratcheting system because she hadn't considered how much friction the machine would generate when it was running sprints, and it took a whole week to figure out how to cast them from polyurethane poured into molds. She repeated machining her panel hooks over and over because she'd screwed up the simple equation she'd used to figure out how long the hooks had to be. It was exhausting and infuriating, and Rey once threw a wrench against the back wall hard enough to dent the shop's metal paneling. By nine every school night, Rey stopped and did her homework while eating her dinner.

Her dinner in those days was a revelation. She saved as much money as she could, but one thing she didn't skimp on was groceries. The first time she went into the supermarket with money in her hand, she was so bewildered by the variety and stunning overabundance of selections that she simply stood in the bread aisle for half an hour, gaping at the floor-to-ceiling racks of choices.  
  
 _Is this all for me??_ she thought to herself.  
  
She'd heard of things like whole wheat and sourdough, even seen them in other kids' lunches, but things like ciabatta and bouls were beyond her. Bakery bread, crispy and fragrant in its brown paper half-bags, was a yeasty miracle. After asking Mr. Walker what she should be eating for her training diet, she bought everything on his list, along with propane to run the RV's hereto unused fridge and little stove burner. Learning to cook was an absolute game-changer, and after burning one beef stir-fry, she dedicated herself to perfecting it with all the resources she could stand to allow herself.

* * *

The first time Rey tested the simulator, it was near midnight on a Saturday in the machine shop. She'd just finished the last of the belt panels--a long one crossed with "roots" made of halved sections of steel pipe--and settled it into the hopper with the others. She let out a deep breath--there was way more to do to make it look presentable, but the guts and skeleton of the machine, the bare-bones stuff needed to make it function, were finally _done._

Maybe.

 _If_ this worked, and didn't bind up like it did all those other times. Like the four different times the hooks had been wrong-sized and the panels just fell off into the belly of the machine and jammed up the hopper. And the time six of the panels were a few millimeters too big and pretty much flew off the machine and dug gouges into the concrete floor of the shop when they landed, _thank god thank god thank god not on her foot_. And the time the timing chain was gappy and made the whole system shriek before Rey could shut things off. Just those times.

And that one time when a broken ratchet-joint exploded out from under a panel, fell into the hopper gears, and ground everything inside into shards, setting her back two full weeks. 

With one hand, she reached behind her back to cross her fingers where neither she nor the machine could see them (because that was just how much she'd hoped it would work this time), and then reached up with the other to flick the starter switch. All four electric motors hummed to life, filling the desert night with a surging sing-song sound that ran like a breeze under the rhythmic _creak, clink, click_ of the panels lifting and locking into place The wide belt moved smoothly, like the cleat of a bulldozer, creating a broad, moving "trail" of odd-textured panels. It was running at its slowest speed, barely a stroll, and _nothing seemed to be going wrong._

Our Alpha Who Art in Heaven might, for once, actually have been looking down on her with something other than a sneer. Or maybe it was Beta Jesus. What little experience she'd had with Christianity had been confusing.

The belt kept running smoothly, and Rey turned the knob that sped it up. Nothing flew apart, and each panel was apparently locking tight with its neighbors. They _looked_ like they were making a surface that would be safe to at least put weight on. She hit the hard-stop button--an actual, mushroom-shaped red STOP button from a steam boiler--and the machine instantly slowed and was silenced. She grabbed a pile of shop rags to cushion her hands and pressed on the middle of the lowest panel, seeing if it would tip or yield. It was solid as the rock it was pretending to be. She pushed harder in the middle, nothing moved, then she really leaned into it. Still nothing. She pushed, then shoved, on each edge and corner, then in two random places at once, over and over.

Rey's heart was suddenly pounding in her chest.

_This was it. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as Mr. Walker would say._

Rey gripped the handrails, holding most of her weight on them in case something suddenly gave way under her, then stepped carefully up into the middle of the belt. It felt solid as a bloody bridge. Still holding most of her weight on her arms, she bounced lightly on the panels. Maybe the joints flexed infinitesimally, but that could have just been the foamy soles of her running shoes. She bounced harder, with no change, then jumped _hard,_ coming down on one foot to concentrate the weight. This time, the belt flexed just slightly, like the sprung hardwood floor of a ballet stage she'd once bounced across during a fourth-grade field trip. It was enough to give her knees a bit of relief, like running on packed earth. Making sure, _sure,_ that the speed controller was set to the slowest possible walk, she warily flicked the starter again. She was expecting it, but she still felt startled when the belt pulled her away from the button, leaving her arm still sticking stupidly out in front of her. Down she went on the slope the machine was creating for her, threatening to dump her off onto the floor if she didn't start walking. She warily stepped up onto the next panel and the next, and the next, the "roots" and "rocks" presenting an unfriendly, constantly changing surface under her feet. She had to look down every second, watching what she was doing so she didn't trip or roll an ankle. Just walking absorbed all her attention, so at first she didn't notice the weird sound. It was a kind of bouncy, huffing sound that intruded on her consciousness slowly, along with a pain in her face.

She was _laughing._ Then she was _screaming_ with laughter.

_"YES, YES, YES, YES, YOU LOVELY THING MAKE ME SOME MONEY!"_

She wanted to leap into the air with joy, so she threw all her weight onto the handrails and kicked her legs out like a happy baby goat. She'd promised Maz and Mr. Walker on her crossed heart that she wouldn't actually run on the thing until she'd hooked up the safety harness, so then, holding most of her weight on her arms, she turned up the speed to a fast walk and "leapt" along it, letting her feet touch lightly down and then springing herself into the air with her arm strength. Sometimes she just held herself in the air and pedaled her feet under her like Wile E. Coyote running over a cliff, still laughing with joy.

After indulging herself for a bit, she caught her breath, her face still aching from the size of her smile, and dropped herself back down on the still-moving panels. She actually had to be really careful, because it was properly simulating exactly the kind of difficult trail she'd face on any mountain ultramarathon. She picked her way along, slowly ramping the slope, until she was actually hiking, first up, and then down, picking her way along just as if she were climbing a big mountain.

It was _hard._ And it was _perfect._

* * *

Once Rey and Mr. Walker trucked the finished simulator to school on Maz's boat trailer, Rey learned to actually run on the machine inside the big, sweltering storage room of the school's auto shop building. Mr. Gunderson had, amazingly, volunteered to empty it out for her to use. She had to allow _him_ to attach her safety harness to the ceiling, which was annoying because she could _totally_ have squirreled up that wall herself and done it (and would've trusted her own fastenings more), but he was the teacher, and had a ladder, and so he did it. She was acutely aware that he was an Alpha, albeit a mated one, so when he put his head through the door at least once a day to watch her picking her way along the terrain panels, the big, sweaty elephant-mask on her face connected to the hypoxia machine, she always felt a shot of cold adrenaline. He just gave her a thumbs-up and left her alone, though, thank all the gods.

With Maz and Mr. Walker's help, she meticulously documented all of her vitals, before, during, and after each session, including the speeds she was capable of running on the machine. She kept Google docs of her stats, and Maz offered all her diagnostic services, statistical software, and ongoing advice for maximizing her gains and designing her case study. With the better food (the increase in her energy levels was astonishing, once she started living on more than cheap starches and the occasional canned protein) and better shoes, Rey started getting fast. _Really_ fast. Her agility gots better, and her flat-ground mile times kept shrinking and shrinking, like the Benjamin Button of mile splits.

In April of that school year, Maz lent her the trailer again, and Mr. Walker used his Camry to tow the simulator to the Kern County High School Science Fair, in Bakersfield, with Rey. It was further from home than Rey had ever traveled, even further than to the Mt. Whitney trailhead where she and Mr. Walker took her before-and-after videos. She stood beside the huge machine and her fold-out posters, plus Maz's loaner laptop and monitors, for ages, talking to the crowds of people who circled around what she now realized was the biggest, loudest, flashiest display in the science fair. When the judges came by, she gave her planned demonstrations of the machine, including opening up the side panels so the mechanisms were on view, taking it through all its settings of slope, speed, and direction, and then first walking, then running on it. The judges were so in awe, and so thorough in vetting the evidence of her physiological progress (including, against the rules, grilling Maz and Mr. Walker), that it fully hit her how totally weird it was, what she'd done. She was an Omega girl (the _only_ Omega and one of only three girls) showing in the Applied Mechanics division, while also doing an experiment on her own extremely athletic body, and showing a bigger, tougher, burlier machine than anyone else in the building. She'd made something that required not just the light soldering, gluing, and bolting that the robotics projects required, but almost a dozen kinds of metal forming and fastening. She was infinitely grateful that Mr. Walker had insisted that she take at least one photo of her progress per day with her phone, with notes in a journal. The montages of her setbacks and mistakes, more than anything, seem to help alleviate the belief that _she_ couldn't possibly have done all this.

At 2:30, when the crowd gathered by the building's stage to hear the awards announcements, Maz and Mr. Walker bracketed her. Maz had made Mr. Walker drag over a chair for her to stand on, and she gripped Rey's shoulder, perhaps harder than necessary, for balance. Mr. Walker stood on Rey's other side, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Being touched by two people at once was a little weird for Rey, but even in the humid heat of the building, their warmth felt wonderful.

The other divisions were announced first, and Rey simply breathed through her jitters and impatience. Then, the final division, Applied Mechanics, came. The youngest groups and lowest awards were announced first, and as other names were called out, Maz started to stroke Rey's hair. Rey couldn't help but lean into it, and unclenched her tight fists. As the high school awards were listed, her hand must've bump against Mr. Walker's, because he took it in his own and held it tight, to Rey's great surprise. Maz and Mr. Walker leaned into her as third place wes called, second place was called, and then, "Our first place winner, and--oh this is a big surprise--the Grand Prize winner for the entire competition, a first for an Omega young lady--is the High Altitude Terrain Simulation System for Ultramarathon Running, created by Rey Niima of Jakku High School!" The polite clapping around her was drowned out by Maz's and, shockingly, _Mr. Walker's_ whoops of joy. Rey slipped forward, then turned back to grin at both of them, who seemed to have only reluctantly let her go, and then she trotted to the stage for her award.

* * *

The situation was very different when they went to the UCLA campus for the California State Science Fair. This time, Rey stayed in a hotel room with Maz, who accompanied her to the empty hotel gym before bedtime and after waking, making her laugh and/or cringe the whole time she was working out, with bawdy stories that Maz then mortified Mr. Walker with over breakfast. Just sleeping someplace that wasn't the RV for the first time since her parents had left was a revelation. The bed was too soft and smelled weird, and the blankets and sheets seemed stiff. She could barely sleep, and it felt so unsettling to even try to do it in a room with another person, even if that person was Maz. Having a bathroom nearby was even weirder. She decided she still wasn't going to drink before bed, since she didn't want to get her body thinking it could wake her up to pee in the night any time it wanted to.

The competition at State was _much_ fiercer. Kern was an ag-and-oil county, so most of the schools were crappy and the students uninspired. Here, she was against Silicon Valley kids with billionaire parents and PhD tutors, some of whom had done the work _for_ the kids. The judging was much harsher, and one of the Alpha male judges flat-out accused her of cheating until she described to him the entire plate-randomizing system without looking at it _and_ explained where she got and how she manufactured each of its parts, _and_ recited the differences between brazing, soldering, arc welding, TIG welding, and MIG welding. He looked impressed by the end of it, and then gave her his business card--he was the CEO of something she'd vaguely heard of and that made Mr. Walker's eyebrows shoot up. Intel or something? Then he introduced her to a short, grim-faced female judge who insisted on watching Rey run for a full half-hour on the simulator at 6-minute mile pace. The judge stood with arms crossed, watching Rey run up, and then down, on the simulator, mask on and O2 set to 11,000 feet of elevation. Rey opened her mouth to suck more air than usual, so she was barely winded by the time she was done. When the judge's phone timer beeped the end of the thirty minutes, Rey simply hopped off the simulator and asked with a smile, "Anything else, Ma'am?" The judge snapped her notebook closed and said, "That will do," and walked off without another word.

At the awards ceremony, this one held at night in an auditorium, Rey couldn't stop bouncing her knees until someone down the row hissed, "stop that!" Blushing, she put her hands under her thighs instead and pinched the velvety seat cushion over and over, like a stress ball. Again, Maz (this time sitting on a child's folding booster seat she'dbrought in her huge purse) squeezed Rey's shoulder and Mr. Walker leaned into her other side. The other winners were called up in a long march, and when Applied Mechanics started, the grim female judge who had made Rey run stepped up to announce.

_Shit._

That woman seemed to have hated her. Rey voluntarily held out her hand for Mr. Walker to take. He did it and patted her hand with his free one. The judge, in that same flat tone, called up the younger students, then the senior high honorable mention, third-place, and second-place winners, leaving Rey still in her seat. As the other kids went up without her, Rey vacillated between blazing hope and total despair. Then the judge said, "For this year's first pIace senior high school winner in Applied Mechanics, I'm pleased to say that the State of California is seeing a number of firsts. This year's winner in Applied Mechanics is the first student from their high school to place in a State Science Fair, the first with a non-robotics project to win in this division since 2002, and the first Omega ever to place in this division." Maz and Rey grabbed hands so hard it hurt. "The winning project is the High Altitude--"

Maz screamed a war whoop and Mr. Walker jumped into the air with a fist up, bellowing, _"YES!"_

The judge looked dryly down at them and continued, "---the High Altitude Terrain Simulation System for Ultramarathon Running, by Rey Niima of Jakku High School."

Mr. Walker grabbed the beaming Rey by the shoulders and hugged her, then pushed her away so she could go down the aisle to the stage. The feeling of applause around her, all _for_ her, was heady. She noticed, as she went, quite a few very small women and a few men leaning out into the aisle, grinning at her, and a few said things that she couldn't hear over the applause but sounded very nice. When she walked up the stairs, the little judge flipped her own hair back a bit and Rey saw the bite-scarred neck gland. Rey puts out her hand to shake the judge's, and the woman pulled her close for a back-pat hug and said in her ear, "Good work, sister. It's about damned time."  
  
Rey took the trophy, held it up while still gripping the judge's hand for the official photographer, and then practically bounced down the stairs to go back. The applause died down by the time she returned to her seat, and as she was scooting back through her row toward her seat, she got patted and congratulated by almost everyone she passed.

The next judge, a weedy-looking, elderly man with Einstein hair, stepped up to announce the overall winners. Rey had waited her whole life for things--for her parents to come back, to get caught for being an Anassa, to get away from Unkar, even to be able to take her first shower at school after summer vacation. This waiting had nothing on that, she realized, because for once, it wasn't about abandonment or terror or shame, but because something wonderful might happen that she didn't even _need_ for survival. She was here with two people who believed in her, who cared about her, who had sacrificed their time and resources over and over to bring her to this point. She could've walk out the door right then, she could've _run_ out, and been happy. If she did win--

Rey startled when she heard, "... and $1,000 to Raymond Jawaherlal, for his project, The Role of Cortisol Agonists in Drosophila Models of Physical Stress."

She leaned over to Mr. Walker. "You didn't tell me there was money at stake," she hissed over the applause.

"Would it have made you work harder?" he asked blithely.

"No! Maybe! I don't know!"

"Then after we clap for the overall winners I'll tell you what the grand prize is at the National Science Fair."

"Fine!"

They clapped for someone named Linda Wei Zhao who got second place and $2,000 for something to do with astronomy.

"And now, ahem, ahem, the Grand Prize of the 2010 California State Science Fair and $5,000 goes to..."

_$5,000?!_

The old man dragged it out like he was announcing the loser on a reality show.

"Miss!"

"Rey!"

"Niima!"

This time it was _Rey_ that screamed. She leapt up and first grabbed Mr. Walker right out of his seat to hug him, then dropped him and picked up the startled, but far lighter Maz to do the same. She set Maz down gently, kissed her on both cheeks, kissed _Mr. Walker_ on the cheeks, then squeezed back down the row toward the aisle. She practically levitates down the aisle, where most of those short women and men who were grinning at her before actually reached out to take her hand and shake it, and in a couple of memorable cases, kiss it. Her joy was so bright she could hardly breathe. When she reached the stage, the old judge handed her a big trophy and a paper check, and said, "My dear, would you like to say a few words?"

Rey froze. She was supposed to talk???

The audience was still applauding, but it was dying down to an expectant quiet. She stepped on numb feet to the microphone, heart pounding, brain blank. She looked out through the glaring stage lights at the crowd, who seemed to have become one gargantuan, breathing animal, waiting for her say... what?

Then she saw Mr. Walker and Maz, and she knew exactly what to say.

"For this award, I would like to thank my teacher and coach, Mr. Luke Walker, and my advisor, Dr. Masia Kanata. Without you, I would still be alone and afraid. This award belongs to you. I love you both."

* * *

On the long trip home, which took most of the night, Rey snoozed in the comfortable back seat of Maz's Mercedes while Mr. Walker and Maz talked quietly in the front. The simulator rolled behind them in its trailer, occasionally rattling as it went over bumps. As she drifted in and out of sleep, she imagined what she'd buy with her $5,000. Race entry fees, she knew. Mr. Walker had told her that to do well at the National Science Fair in Washington DC, she should have raced in at least one actual mountain ultra as proof of efficacy. Entry fees, and a car, she decided. The moment she turned 16, she was going to have Mr. Walker take her in to get her license, and then she'd have one more way of being free.

* * *

Rey and Mr. Walker had decided that the first race she tried shouldn't be at altitude. Instead, she should experience what an ultra looked and smelled like, what the expectations were, how to read the trail markers, how to get through the aid stations, when to expect help, and how to run with pacers, at least once, before she attempted a trail ultra. The National Science Fair would be in early May, just before most schools' graduations, and she needed to take at least three weeks to rest after one race to do another, so they signed her up for the next one on the calendar, the Golden State 50, a flat-terrain 50-miler that wound through almond and orange orchards in the muggy, pesticide-smelling heat of Bakersfield.

They planned for Mr. Walker to be her pacer for the first mile after the first aid-station, and then would switch off with other pacers after the aid-stations that followed.  
  
"Wish I could keep you company longer, kid, but I wouldn't be able to keep up," he'd said, then smiled and wiggled his eyebrows and added, "Hopefully, no one will."

He made inquiries around the Bakersfield marathoners' community to see if there were any fast runners who would be willing to do ten or so miles at a time with her, and two, who were, amusingly, named Jim and Jim, said yes. They were both young Alpha males. When Rey anxiously called Maz with this news, she said she thought it would be fine, that Padme had competed in the same space as Alpha men all the time, and it hadn't seemed to have made a difference. "When you're at your leisure," she warned, "that's when to keep away from them."

After a few weeks of ramping down her training so that she was spending most of her cardio hours doing core and upper-body work, Rey felt astonishingly well-rested. She'd never gone more than a day without at least a ten-mile run since she'd started running to first grade. It was something that her rebellious heart wanted to get used to, and it was another desire that she simply noticed, as Maz had suggested, then smushed.

The night before the race, Mr. Walker picked her up at 7 and they drove the two hours to Bakersfield together. She insisted on paying for his hotel room, this time, something he seemed to find terrifically amusing but humored her on, and she woke up well before her alarm went off in her chilly room next door to his, jittery in the pre-dawn darkness. Mr. Walker had told her what to do, and they'd practiced it over and over--start steady and _hold_ steady at her pace, not pick up her mile splits at all until the last 20 miles, chat with her pacer if it didn't slow her down, and don't let anyone shake her, no matter what they said or did.

Mr. Walker, she reminded herself over and over, would drop in beside her as she ran past the first aid-station at the ten-mile mark, and would stick with her for at least a mile. Then the pacers would drive slowly along the road, waiting to get a text from Mr. Walker, and then pick him up wherever he stopped. Then they'd drive ahead of her, leapfrogging her to the next aid-station. There, they'd wait until she arrived and be ready to give her anything she needed, and when she was ready to go again, Jim #1 would take off with her. He'd stay as long as she wanted him to, and they'd repeat until they hit the final section, which Rey would do alone.

They drove to the start line, where the Jims met them. To Rey's relief, both were mated and introduced themselves without even sniffing in her general direction. Then Mr. Walker, in a moment that was as intimate as holding hands at the science fair had been, attached Rey's race number to her T-shirt with four little safety pins. She bent down to tie the little timer-chip through her shoelaces, and when she stood up, Mr. Walker raised his chin at her. "You ready?"

She took a deep breath of the increasingly muggy air and just nodded. "Yeah. I am."

They went to the start line. Standing in the crowd of runners waiting for the gun felt utterly alien, despite the fact that she'd visualized it dozens of times as part of her training. They were all milling around like cattle, thick as kids in the school cafeteria, smelling to high heaven of Alphas, plus a handful of faint Omega scents. The mix of them all was... pungent. Not terrible, but filling up the whole inside of her sinuses. Without thinking, she drifted closer to a couple of beta women, whose minimal-pheromone bodies made a sort of island in the wash of scent.

A very big Alpha dude, whom she'd noticed stalking around through the crowd, approached her. "Haven't see you here before," he said, looking her up and down. His gaze seemed to settle on her wiry, muscular legs.

_Polite, polite, polite._

"Nope, this is my first. I'm Rey. Nice to meet you."

He looked at the hand she'd held out to shake, and didn't take it for a moment. She saw him think something, _something nasty,_ she thought, and started pulling her hand back, but she wasn't quite quick enough. He grabbed it and there was a startlingly creepy sensation as he somehow stroked her palm with his middle finger while shaking her hand, and tugged her toward him, just enough to pull her off balance. She tried to yank her hand away and he gripped it tight, an ugly grin moving across his face. He rumbled at her, _"Go nice and slow, Omega, and then come find me after I win. Be wet."_

Her brain felt foggy for a moment, and she suddenly felt so relaxed, so _nice and slow_.... Somewhere in the background, she heard the _ding-ding-ding_ of the bell that signaled people to line up for the starter's gun. Time seemed to slow. She felt her jaw slacken a bit, and her breath rose in her chest as she stepped toward the Alpha, and then the lovely dawn breeze ruffled her hair back and--

And she _smelled_ him.

He smelled _heinous._

Over his generally pleasant alpha scent, he smelled like rotting garbage... it was the smell of cruelty and _sneakiness._

Rey had been dealing with shitty men her whole life. For once, she was surrounded tightly by people when one was being shitty. She ripped her hand out of his and yelled, "OY! You PERVE!" When the faces around her swiveled to her, she yelled, "This asshole just Alpha commanded me to _lose!"_ There was a collective gasp, but then the starting gun went off with a _crack._

There was a moment of confusion as the man pushed people out of his way to hit the course, and some of the people around her moved to surround her, asking what had happened. Rey thought, _FUCK THIS,_ and took off after the Alpha, a snarl on her face. _That fucker would not win._

He had _much_ longer legs, and he was nearly sprinting to get to the head of the pack. She dodged between the runners and race-walkers ahead of her, not exactly gaining on him, but at least keeping him in her sights. She sped up, leaned into her legs, and started passing more people. Her chest started to burn a bit, and suddenly everyone was behind her except the Alpha. The trail turned a corner to follow a farm road, and suddenly she could no longer see him. _That_ was not tolerable. She stretched out her gait, making her legs start to burn with lactic acid as her feet sank into the soft dirt of the road's berm. _There he was again._ She sped up, now gaining on him a bit, barely aware of the sound of a car behind her on the road. Trees flashed past her on one side, and on the other, a Camry went by, white and a little rusty like...

...like Mr. Walker's.

The car stopped about 100 yards ahead of her and Mr. Walker jumped out of the passenger seat and run out into the empty dirt road, his hands out in a _stop_ gesture. "Rey, slow down!" She slowed just a little, and he started jogging backward, yelling, "What are you _doing?_ You're burning yourself out. You need to slow down!"

As she approached him, she shouted, "That _asshole_ cheater up there Alpha-commanded me to lose, and then told me to find him after the race. For _sex!_ "

Mr. Walker's eyebrows shot up as she made it to him, and he turned and ran alongside her as she dashed past him. "Are you sure?!"

She glared at him furiously. _"Sir--"_

Fortunately, he knew what _sir_ meant now, too. "Sorry, shouldn't have asked that," he panted. "I'll talk to the race organizers. Did anyone else hear him say it?"

She growled, "No. Maybe. I don't know."

"Then they'll probably pull both of you to talk, and it will be your word against his. You might be able to get him kicked out, but you'll both be out of the lead. What do you want me to do?"

Ah _that_ was the right question. _"Help me win._ Help me beat him so bad he never talks to an Omega again without his testicles retracting."

Mr. Walker barked out a breathless laugh. "Not-appropriate comment, but OK. What was our plan?"

"Steady pace for 30 miles," she recited from memory. "No lactic-acid buildup, then open it up to five-and-half-minute pace. Do that until I'm leading the pack, and then the last two miles sprint. But that's blown now."

"You're hurting already?" he puffed.

"Yeah."

"How bad?"

"I can live with it."

"For five hours?"

"You have no idea."

He looked at her oddly. "We need to talk about that later."

"Later. What now?"

"Drop back to pace."

"What?! He's so far ahead!" She gestured at the man's shrinking back.

"Look at him, Rey."

"I _am_ looking at him. I'm watching him _beating me!"_

"No, you're not looking. _Look."_

She really looked this time, looking at his build, his form. "He's bloody tall, _really_ long strides, like Pam Phasma long. Big physical advantage, so I should pass him, get ahead, get a psychological advantage."

"No," Mr. Walker huffed. _"Keep looking."_

She did, looking beyond what was making him fast. She scanned his whole body, checking out his running form. She suddenly wants to squealed with glee. "Ooooh, his shoulders! They're _high!_ They're practically around his ears _!"_

"Which means?"

 _"He's already tired._ He's pushing too hard. He's gonna fall back, like within 15 miles probably."

"Looking like that, he's not gonna make it to the next aid station if he doesn't slow down. He's not pacing himself. Which means?"

"To paraphrase Finn, I'm gonna kick his Alpha ass with my hot little Omega feet," she crowed.

_"Language."_

"Not today."

She saw him suppress a smile under his beard.

"Fine. Still not appropriate. What are you going to do now?"

She slows. Way down. Way, way down, to her planned pace.

"Slower." Mr. Walker said.

"But I'm at pace!"

"You're adrenalized, and you're 15 seconds too fast."

She groaned and slowed down more.

"Good. Drink some water."

She took out her waist bottle and wetted her admittedly dusty throat. It felt like heaven to drink, and slow down. She was suddenly alarmed and started unconsciously speeding up.

"He _commanded_ me to go slow. What if I start going too slow?!"

"You won't," Mr. Walker said, patient as a stone. "You're going to monitor your body just like you've done every single day we've practiced, and you're going to keep on pace."

She paid attention to her body, to her cadence and stride, and slowed back down. "Shit."

"Lang--"

_"Not tod--"_

_"OK._ But don't tell anyone at school."

"Deal."

Mr. Walker was really starting to gasp. "I'm gonna drop back. I'll wait for you at the next aid station. What do you want to do if someone's already reported the guy?"

"Just tell them I want to keep running, and they can do whatever they want at the finish line."

"OK," he rasped. "Hold steady."

"Holding steady," she called as he walked back behind her, leaving her alone on the road.

* * *

Forty minutes later, Rey saw the first aid station come into view, the pop-up tents lined with tables, chairs, and coolers. Mr. Walker's car was parked behind it, in the shade of an irrigation tower, and she recognized Mr. Walker and one of the Jims beside it, talking with a woman who was holding a walkie-talkie. Jim #2 was under a tent, digging through the duffel bag they had her snacks in. One of the other tents was milling with people surrounding a folding chair. Seated on the chair was that fucking Alpha _cheater jerk,_ with one of his shoes off. A woman was kneeling in front of him rubbing something on his toes, and other people were rubbing his legs and plying him with drinks and food.

Rey caught his eye as she jogged by, not even slowing as he glared at her, and flipped him the bird with both defiant hands. _"Suck it, cheater!"_ she yelled.  
  
Jim #2 jogged out alongside her, grinning, and handed her a packet of energy gel. She kept running, perfectly on pace.

* * *

In the car on the way back to Jakku, Rey was collapsed against the back passenger door of the sedan, her feet propped up on a huge stack of pillows so that the lactic acid and extra blood would drain out of them faster. Her entire body ached, and her feet and legs were in a kind of mild fugue of agony. Her head lolled against the window as the sunset scrolled out behind them. Mr. Walker's CD player was playing Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" quietly enough that she could hear him sigh.

"I'm sorry about all that with the race officials," he said.

She shook her head exhaustedly, knowing he could see her where he'd cocked the rearview mirror sideways to view the backseat. "It's all right. You warned me they probably wouldn't believe me."

"It's not that they didn't believe you, I think. They just didn't..."

"Didn't have proof. Because when an Omega gets harassed and it's her word against the Alpha's, it's not proof. Because it's better to let an Alpha keep harassing than to believe an Omega's word might be worth anything."

Mr. Walker said, "That's not exactly--"

"--If the shoe fits, they can bloody well wear it." She knew she was sulking a bit, and decided to just let it go for now. "Ah well, still worth it." She grinned, "The look on his _pig_ face when he saw me eating his snacks at the finish line, now that was golden."

Mr. Walker tried very hard to suppress his smile again, and failed again. "That was petty," he said.

"But golden."

"But golden," he agreed.

Golden, just like her belt buckle, she thought. She lifted the gold-plated, oversized buckle out of its padded box. "GOLDEN STATE 50" it read on top, above its ornate background of orange trees. Below, it said, "FIRST PLACE." She couldn't help but look over the finisher's certificate underneath, which read, "Rey Niima, 6 hours, 49 minutes, 12 seconds, Field Winner" Someone had hand-lettered underneath the pre-printed stuff, "Course Record." She gently slid it back under the $3,000 check and laid it all back in her lap. She'd just keep holding it all the way home. It felt nice in her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's the deal with the belt buckles? 
> 
> The modern ultramarathon, as Rey and "Mr. Walker" mentioned earlier, was born at the Western States 100, a hundred-mile *horse race* through the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. In 1973, rider Gordy Ansleigh was competing on a new horse in what was then the Western States Trail Ride when it pulled up lame at the 29-mile mark. He'd already finished the race on horseback in 1971 and 1972, and decided to try a different form of transportation in 1974--his feet. He started with the horses and ran with them, hoping to finish within the 24 hours allotted for them. Twenty-three hours and forty-two minutes later, he arrived at the finish line. Now, the traditional "trophy" for ultramarathons is a rodeo-style belt buckle of the kind awarded to WSTR winners.


	14. Connecting

2019

When Ben arrived back home on the 11th, he didn't do what he _always_ did after camping. Normally, he would've immediately taken apart his pack, tossed his trash, put away any unopened food, and then stripped out his gear to clean it. The tent would've gotten thoroughly brushed and shaken off, outside and inside, then draped over the balcony rail inside-out to dry. The sleeping bag and pad would've gotten the same treatment. The cookware would've been sterilized and stored properly, and any supplies he'd used up would've been inventoried and a list made to replace them. All the sundries would've gone back into his "go box" and the big items--the tent, backpack, sleeping bag, and sleeping pad--would be hung--full-length, never folded--inside his gear closet. Then he would've taken an incredibly satisfying shower, gone to the Irish pub two blocks over for an enormous plate of corned beef, and then napped.

This time, Ben walked in his flat, dumped his pack by the balcony door, and fired up his laptop. Within seconds, Google was telling him there were zero results for "Ray Nayima," "Ray Nayeema," "Ray Neyema," "Ray Nayema," or any of a dozen other variations with "Re" (because maybe her parents were musical). He was feeling sick and ready to bang his head on the keyboard, when he tried, "female Omega runner Boulder," and there she was. Everywhere.  
  


 **  
Women Lead the Pack Again: World's Top Ultra Runners Profiled  
** sportsillustrated.com  
February 6, 2019 - When a female trail runner like Boulder's Rey Niima approaches an altitude 100-miler like the 2019 Misty Mountain Hop, they're facing not just oxygen deprivation and a brutal endurance test--they're usually staring down the barrel of sexism and designation bigotry to boot. Niima, the first Omega to win a 50-miler, 100-miler, 200-miler, 50K, 100K, and 200K, set her first course record at just 15 after....  
  
 **Niima Smashes Another 100  
** runnersworld.com  
January 18, 2019 - When Omega female Rey Niima saunters up to the starting line of any 100-miler, Alpha males tremble in their running shoes. This weekend was no exception, as the 22-year-old Boulder engineering grad student earned her claim to fame yet again on the trails of Black Canyon, where...  
  
 **Niima Becomes First Omega 24-Hour World Champion  
** itra.run  
November 11, 2019 - Boredom, agony, and exhaustion are the enemies at the World 24-Hour Championships, but Rey Niima, the Blitzkreig from Boulder, seemed almost nonchalant when the final bell rang in Portland this year. The 22-year-old female Omega was an astonishing 34.83 kilometers ahead of last year's top runner, Alpha male Felipe Marquez, who set his own PR with a 213.07-kilometer triumph.  
  
 **The Alpha of the Omegas: Rey Niima CRs Leadville Again  
** trailrunnermag.com  
August 19, 2018 - When Rey Niima (Boulder, CO) shook up the ultrarunning world with her debut course record (and the world's first official ultra win for an Omega) at the 2012 Golden State 50, she inspired a wave of Omega runners to join the sport. This year, her victory at the Leadville Trail 100, the nation's highest-altitude 100-miler, was a little less solitary than usual. A flock of Omegas trailed her, with seven finishers within the allowed 29 hours, the highest number yet on this course.  
  
 **Resistance Races' Trans-Delta/Trans-Delta 50-Miler Won by Omega Woman  
** nytimes.com  
July 28, 2018 - When The Resistance, the progressive think-tank and fundraising unit of U.S. Senator Leia Organa's political organization, puts on a charity race, they don't think in terms of Turkey Trots and 5ks. "Ultra-distance running is a sport that demonstrates the true nature of human equality," Organa (D-CO) said. "At a 50-mile distance, everyone, no matter their designation or gender, has an opportunity to win, and today's results were a perfect example of that..."

Ben stopped reading there, though there were fourteen more pages of results.

_Unbelievable._

Rey was an _ultrarunner._

She ran in _his mother's_ races.

And, she was as close to being a world champion as the wildly disorganized sport had.

Well, that was all fucking ironic.

His guts were a mix of anxiety and something his mother, now that he was thinking about her, would've called "that swoony feeling." If Rey knew about his past, she'd run screaming away and never look back. And, if Rey was half the woman he was now imagining her to be, his crush on her had just gotten a hundred times worse. He knew strong women, powerful women, but most of them were Betas, Alphas like his mother, or, in the one example that stood out like a bloody gash across his mind, a terrifying nightmare. Rey, in their one meeting, had acted like, as the article said, "The Alpha of the Omegas"--confident, unbelievably competent, but soft. 

Why was this so insanely attractive? His whole life, he'd felt deeply drawn to stereotypical Omega women--all of whom were small, delicate, kind, curvaceous, and, well, submissive or at least highly deferential. Women who needed him to--or at least made it clear that they expected him to--take care of them in all kinds of ways. He didn't know Rey well, and she had seemed exceptionally kind in their single conversation, but as for those other things, she obviously was none of them, least of all subordinate. In fact, she was adamantly his _equal._ More than an equal. His _better_ in ways that were completely atypical for a woman, much less an Omega.

_Shit._

Ben hadn't felt intimidated by a romantic interest in years. Not since he'd gotten over the toe-curling awfulness of learning to date in the outside world. Now, he was faced with this delicious, terrifying conundrum of an Omega, whom he couldn't get out of his mind for a second. And he was spooked.

He knew he had attractive qualities--his body (if you liked enormous and muscular), his designation (if you liked Alphas), his money, his intellect, his knowledge about how certain aspects of the world worked. To give himself at least a ghost of a chance of succeeding in the business world after he'd gotten back from Afghanistan, he'd spent a lot of time with a good therapist, so his need for violence had been sublimated and his self-image was no longer "the piece of shit the world revolves around." But Rey....

Rey was a _goddess._ She was unclaimed, but that didn't mean she didn't have a partner he hadn't smelled on her or that she wasn't just overwhelmed by sexy people throwing themselves at her feet like worshipful Labrador retrievers.

Feeling sick again, he helplessly Googled "Rey Niima."

There were more pages of running results, going back to her high school years. She had write-ups in every running magazine in the world, it seemed, plus local, national, and international papers, blogs, and news sites. There were even, he was chilled to read, some enraged posts about her wins on Essentialist sites--"unnatural," the word she'd said she got called a lot, was the kindest thing they had to say about her.

He opened a tab for one of these posts.  
  


 **  
"IRREFUTABLE PROOF THAT REY NIIMA CHEATS--BITCHES RUINING ULTRA SPORTS AGAIN"  
** theessentialalpha.com _  
_August 2, 2018 - SO I'm an ultra-runner, which until a few years ago was the ultimate badass sport. There's nothing to show your stones like running a hundred fucking miles while other men drop out, shitting themselves and hallucinating behind you. I've finished 9 ultras, all in the top 50 finishers, and for a long time the finisher's tent was pure ALPHA MALE territory. We were men, in the mountains, proving ourselves. Things started sucking when women were allowed in... _  
_

  
  
He read through the "proof" and saw that the writer had no idea what "proof" or "irrefutable" meant, and then definitely did not read the comments.

He let out a pained breath and thought, _Let the past die, Ben,_ and went back to his search page.

There was a lot of interesting stuff, though very little of it about her as a person. About halfway through the results there was, surprisingly, a local government notice giving the address of a home she'd purchased for a steal at a foreclosure auction about four years ago, likely right after she'd moved to Boulder for college. Feeling a bit creepy, he Google Mapped the address, and got a panoramic photo of a rural mailbox and dirt driveway for his troubles, plus a map showing the canyon road with a "16 minutes with traffic" notation of how far it was from his building. He put the address in his phone, _just in case._

From near the same time, there was a weird headline that he couldn't help but click.

**  
Sale of the Month: Teen Scientist Buys Tons of Steel for Mystery Project  
battersea.auctions.co.com**

_Every month Battersea Colorado Auctions highlights a sale that's funny, lucrative, or otherwise a hoot for our newsletter readers._

_June 30, 2015_

When Battersea Colorado auctioneers part out a bankrupt Pueblo steel mill, the last bidder we expect to seat is an 18-year Omega girl with $50,000 cash in hand. That's why we were even more surprised when this private buyer, Rey Niima, purchased not a suite of office furniture or the rare 1898 Remington oil painting from the former CEO's office, but almost eleven tons of steel plate stock, a lot of six 50-horsepower conveyor belt motors, and sundry lots including sets of doors and gears. To our surprise, we found out that Miss Niimaa isn't just a world-record-setting ultra-marathon runner (Miss Niima tells us an ultra marathon is any distance over 26.2 miles, but she typically runs races of 100 miles or more--WOW), she was last year's National Science Fair first prize winner. Her winning project, a high-altitude simulating treadmill, was the first non-robotics prize in many years to win in her division, Mechanics and Engineering. It nabbed the incoming University of Colorado Boulder freshperson both the $100,000 national first prize and a full ride to the college of her choice (lucky for us, it was the five year bachelor-to-master's automotive engineering program at CU), as well as trained her up to take first place in her first two ultramarathons, which had their own considerable purses.

What's a girl genius to do with hot-rolled steel tonnage and industrial motors? Build a giant robot? Put together a mission to Mars? When we asked her on the auction floor after her big buy, she said, "Uh, furnish my supervillain lair?"  
  
We hope not, Miss Niima, we sincerely hope not.

Check out these other classic Sales of the Month:  
 _Finding Grandad's Heirlooms in Your Neighbor's Barn_  
 _Mother May I?! Toddler Bids Online For Yacht_  
 _It's Not Just a Game: Rare First Edition Monopoly Set Fetches Record Price_

_Huh._

Among the rest of the older results was a treasure trove of articles about her also being the first Omega girl to win the National Science Fair. He shook his head. _Fucking impressive,_ but no real surprise, considering the ambitiousness of the engine she'd said she was designing. He pulled up a dozen images of her from that era, trying to compare her to himself at his age. Where he'd been sullen and hideous, she was simply radiant, always being handed trophies and checks or huddling for the camera with other grinning, victorious teenagers. But he also noticed something else. He had a good eye for clothes and shoes, always had, thanks to his mother. And Rey looked like she used to be poor. In every single image, she was wearing worn-looking, unfashionable clothes that didn't fit, that clearly hadn't been purchased new for her.

He revised his Google search, limited it to 2018, and clicked rapidly through the articles, touting up in his head what she'd made last year in race purses. She was doing exceptionally well for a grad student, but she'd grown up poor, he would bet on it.

"Poor people," Washington had taught him during their first tour together, "don't know shit about rich people." He remembered his friend saying that poor people can't imagine the ease the rich live with, the strangeness of their concerns. They don't understand their tastes, the codes of their behavior, can't imagine the things they can afford to get interested in, from obscure art to particular flavors of pettiness. And becoming not-poor in America was possible with a great deal of hard work, but going from poor to rich was almost impossible, because you needed the money of other rich people to fuel any major business. And to get rich people to give you their money, you had to empathize with them, and they had to be able to relate to you. Poor people, Washington had told him, needed a rich mentor if they were going to make any real bank.

As someone who'd been rich almost his entire life, Ben could do that for her. He might or might not be able to touch her heart, but he could help her get investors. And if it was humanly possible for something else to happen between them, he would try to be the man worthy of it happening.

* * *

Ben was in a bad habit of leaving about 400 tabs open on his laptop. He might need them again, after all. This one he left buried under others, because he really didn't want to look at it.

**"IRREFUTABLE PROOF THAT REY NIIMA CHEATS--BITCHES RUINING ULTRA SPORTS AGAIN"  
** theessentialalpha.com **  
**

_THE ESSENTIAL ALPHA: where alphas rule omegas drool and betas get schooled_

-Bob Lilywhite

SO I'm an ultra-runner, which until a few years ago was the ultimate badass sport. There's nothing to show your stones like running a hundred fucking miles while other men drop out, shitting themselves and hallucinating behind you. I've finished 9 ultras, all in the top 50 finishers, and for a long time the finisher's tent was pure ALPHA MALE territory. We were men, in the mountains, proving ourselves. Things started sucking when women were allowed in (because why are they even in the mountains except as support crew, amiright? Men are men and girls den.) Suddenly there were way more rules, mandatory suppressants and blockers which people say there's no difference but we all know they make your dick shrink and your running times slower. Like always, ALPHA MALES being punished for everyone else's weakness. Anyway, then that zoo freak bitch Spam Phasma won her first race and it was like the entire lamestream media decided to report that "ultras are for everybody, waaah, waaah, waaah," and we had to have a billion nannies on the race course looking out for the little snowflakes who should never have been allowed to enter. Ten million aid stations, roads blocked, mandatory medical checkins, all the usual safe space bullshit.

Well this month, I had to run the so called TRANS-DELTA/TRANS-DELTA because it was it the only fucking qualifier left before the Badwater 100, and what a shitshow. It was a race across the Mississippi Delta put on by the worst of the blue haired libtards in the Democrat party swamp, (((Leia Organa.))) The race was to raise money for mutilation surgeries and castration drugs for the transgenders and so-called deltas (like, how the fuck is that even a thing???? Either you have glands or you don't, and they make alphelone or omegagen, no exceptions.) I pretty much gagged when I found out what my entry fee was going for but whatever, at least they can't breed after they get their precious mutilations.

So, I get there, and there's fucking Rey Niima. AND SHE'S ON STEROIDS, NO DOUBT. Here is the proof: 1: Omegas can not develop that kind of muscle tone, it's not possible, eveybody knows that. They've researched the maximum muscle development omegas can have and minimum fat amount and she's so far off that she looks like a starved alpha. It's a fact, read "As Nature Demands," read "The Essential Alpha," read "Dawn of Society." Niima is NOT NORMAL. 2: She has NO SCENT. Even on max dose suppressants she would have a scent but she's like a beta who just took a shower. (Makes it super creepy to be around her because you can't read her scent to know when she's lying to you.) You know who also has no scent?? Female weightlifters and Spam Phasma, both on roids. BAM. 3: UNFEMININE. She has pretty much NO ASS or TITS, is ALMOST SIX FEET TALL, no MATE and NO KIDS at 21. The last two things could be because she's a dyke, but her body is living proof. She's either been on juice since she was a teenager (DING DING DING guess when she started winning races, that's right, when she was a teenager) or she's a genetic freak who should not be allowed to compete. I would not have believed she was an omega if I didn't actually see her glands. An ALPHA MALE would be kicked out if he was on steroids like she obviously is but because the sport is so sucking the "diversity" tit now, they don't care about cheating and real competition. ALPHA MALES will always get pushed to the back and made to do all the heavy lifting in life when the (((TOLERANT LEFT))) gets their hands in things.

SO, my ALPHA MALES, I can no longer recommend trying to level up to run these races. Do not try to join my once awesome sport. You will be up against cheaters and freaks who face no consequences at least until they meet God.

Comment:  
alphagotstones17  
DISGUSTING AND UNFAIR!!!!! DID YOU KNOW SHE CHEATED AGAINST ACE RYERSON I N HER FIRST RACE, TRIED TO GET HIM PULLED BY CLAIMING HE ALPHA COMMANDED HER TO LOSE AND THEN HAVE SEX WITH HIM AFTER THE RACE?

Comment:  
realdude4real  
@alphagotstones17 Lik thats even possible!!! If he commanded her she would have done it and liked it. OMEGAS CANT IGNORE ALPHA COMMANDS, NOT FROM A BULL ALPHA LIKE ACE. And Ace is the man, totally would not cheat. I know him and his hot hot (REAL OMEGA) mate why would he even want to hump that ugly ass piece of string?

Comment:  
88eatsteak88  
Man, you are right about these so-called races. There is a movement against them in the Red Pill Essentialist Forums. Like, shut that shit down. They're setting a real dangerous example for little girls. They are not going to be able to continue this much longer. We have to protect society so that little omegas don't ruin their bodies with drugs and over-exercise, getting sterile and cancer from the steroids. I new a widowed mother Omega who ran marathons and she got cancer and left her four kids behind when she died and they are all on welfare now. Omegas need to stay on the side of righteousness, just like everyone else. We march in our place or we get left by the side of the road.

Comment:  
whiskyinmykoffee  
MORE LIKE SHOULD BE SHOT AND LEFT BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD, @88EATSTEAK88.

Comment:  
bombsknives&guns  
@88eatsteak88 is right. Mutants, cheaters, and femicommies will not be tolerated for much longer. So-called ultra races are not worth existing (no offense, OP! you are the knot!) bc of the message they send to society that all are "equal", and the hammer is about to come down on them. Violence now that saves little omega girls later is worth it. Bomb for omegas, bitches.

Comment:  
burnaplannedparenthoodforjesus  
haha take my money @bombsknives&guns. ill buy the molotof cocktail supplies you take me to the next race night before, we be cool. world will thank us in 50 years if not now\

Comment  
no-order-without-the-firstorder  
Friends, you have nothing to worry about. I live in the FO compound and we have this covered. The next race that Leia Organa puts on will be the last ultramarathon any omega ever runs in. This unnatural behavior will end soon. We are making the world right again for all people. ALPHAS LEAD, OMEGAS BEAR, BETAS SERVE, AMEN.

Comment:  
88eatsteak88  
@no-order-without-the-firstorder you guys are heroes.

Comment:  
burnaplannedparenthoodforjesus  
Where can I join you, @there-iS-no-order-without-the-firstorder???

Comment:  
Bob Lilywhite (AUTHOR)  
@no-order-without-the-firstorder, that's what I call being a real Alpha. Make the world safe, friend, and AlphaGodspeed!

* * *

It was the 16th.

Rey was staring at her phone again.

The ancient Android with the cracked corner and machine oil all over the case was in her left palm, facing up, staring right back at her with its one big eye.

And her right hand? It was doing _its_ new thing again--scrolling to "Ben Solo" in her contact list, tapping the _text_ icon, then instantly clicking the phone to _off_ as if a text might spontaneously compose itself and send, all on its own, _oops!_

She'd been doing this at odd intervals all week, despite knowing he was still up in the mountains, totally out of range until today. She had, a hundred times, stared at her contacts list, rehearsed oh-so-casual messages to him, imagined typing them, then thought better-- _much_ better--of it, because she was not an idiot who wanted to live the rest of her life in some grim, nursery-themed military lockdown. Then she would put the phone in some place she couldn't actually touch it for a while, like in her backpack on the other side of the room, or in her locker when she was working at school. Rinse, repeat.

 _Today was the day he was supposed to come back._ If she sent him a text now, it probably wouldn't get buried in the mountain of messages that surely had built up while he'd been gone. He'd see it. He might respond.

Her phone was still staring at her, and she gently picked it up and flipped it from hand to hand.  
  
 _Look at me, look away. Look at me, look away._

Her tattoos also stared up at her from her wrists, blanketing protectively over her carpal scent glands. She was the Mother of Iron, remember? Things made of iron--her engines, the iron will it took to run ultras, her steel-lined little house--could be her only mate, her only children, unless she was ready to give those things up and never pick them back up again. _Fuck._

And here was the truth: she _wanted_ to contact Ben Solo.

And that was what made this dangerous. It wasn't just that he'd offered to mentor her in the incredibly convoluted, confusing world of startup dynamics, and gee, she'd be nuts not to take advantage of that. If that was all it was, there'd be a good chance that she'd never repeat her stupid mistakes on the mountain, and they could just spend time together with no problems. They could be friends, business friends.

No, it was that he was funny, and kind, and was so generous to her, and... very attractive. Very, very attractive. Rey felt her eyes wet a little, with bitterness. 

Despite Maz's advice to cultivate a vibrant internal fantasy life, she'd mostly just cut off those kinds of feelings, after finding that very few people actually turned her on, and when she did like someone, she kept wanting to act on her fantasies in real life, and that it _hurt_ when she couldn't. What was the point of thinking about people she could never touch, never be loved back by? What was the point of imagining being cared for when she never would? It just wasted the mental energy she could spend on things that would actually improve her life.

But now.

Now here was Ben.

Ben, who actually liked her back and wanted to spend time with her. Enormous, odd-looking, beautiful Ben. As she'd sat beside the fire with him, eating the astonishing food he'd made, drenching her senses in incredible aromas, life had felt like pure wonder. His life, his stories--there was something there that felt so alive and almost haunting to her. The sight of his huge, empty camp, the way he'd thoughtlessly given her all his medical supplies, his weeks alone on the mountain... it felt lonely. It felt so _familiar._

And then there was his _self._ The fantastic way his whole face crinkled up when that generous mouth grinned. The shifting, restless hands, the big calm body, the incisive mind. And the way he'd strode up the trail in front of her, it was like looking up a second mountain. She'd seen way too many Alphas in her life, frankly, but she couldn't look _away_ from Ben. Those long, long, long muscular legs, the massive chest and biceps stretching out his T-shirt, and the... oh god, she was actually thinking this: the bulge in his hiking shorts... which was... well, huge. _UGH._

Rey groaned and set down her phone again. She looked down between her legs.

_Seriously? Again? Wet?_

She didn't get aroused much, simply because she didn't make a point of it. She pleasured herself fairly regularly to let off steam, but it was perfunctory, fast, almost without sensuality. Sensuality felt... dangerous.

And now, Ben Solo felt dangerous, too.

* * *

It was the 16th.

Ben was staring at his phone. Again.

He knew she was very unlikely to call--she'd _literally run away from him,_ after all--but today was the day he'd told her he'd be back. So if she was going to call, well...

_Fucking hell, he had it bad._

He set the phone down with a quiet sigh, then picked it up again. He fiddled with it for a moment, turned up the volume a little to give his hands something to do, and had just turned it over to set it down again when it buzzed in his hand like a captured bee. He instantly flipped it and a message sat at the top of his security screen:

_Unknown Number_

_Hi Ben, it's Rey Niima. U were so..._

He whooped like he'd just won a new car, and unlocked the screen, his grin so big it hurt.

_Hi Ben, it's Rey Niima. U were so  
_ _kind after I fell on 4th of July Trail  
_ _& I wanted to thank u again and  
_ _aplgz 4 having 2 leave suddenly.  
_ _Would so appreciate the opportunity  
_ _2 thank u properly & take u up on yr  
offer _ _to c yr biz plans. Could I buy u a  
_ _coffee and pie at Dotty's some  
_ _morning?_

Hot damn. She'd just asked him out.

* * *

After a quick exchange of texts setting up their first meeting, they settled on the upcoming Saturday, and Ben spent the whole of Friday and then early Saturday morning scrubbing down, fluffing up, and polishing his apartment. There was zero reason to think she'd come up, but he didn't really interrogate the urge. He'd been aggressively domesticating for months, so no reason to stop now.

Dotty's was just around the corner, after all. You never knew.

Even if she didn't see it, he decided, he'd go to her knowing that his home was perfect, welcoming, warm, appealing. This was about confidence. What Omega didn't appreciate confidence in an Alpha?

A few minutes before they were supposed to meet, just as Ben was about to walk out the door to the cafe, she called.

 _Please,_ please _don't be canceling,_ he begged silently, and schooled himself to sound neutral as he picked up. "Hey Rey."

"Hey Ben." She sounded tense. "I totally forgot that the modern art festival's this weekend, and downtown is completely mobbed. I'm a couple of blocks from Dotty's now but there's no parking anywhere, so I'm going into the neighborhoods to park. I'll be about ten minutes late. Sorry."

_Perfect!_

"Just come park in my guest space. I'm two blocks away, in the Boulder Plaza Building on 13th, in the Apartment 3 slots. You can just drive right into the parking garage."

"Really? That would be brilliant!"

"I'm just going to... hold on a sec." He juggled the phone to open his laptop and pull up the building's residential security camera system. "Just checking to make sure it's empty. Sometimes people think it's public parking." The black and white feed facing his electric BMW buffered, buffered, finally loaded, and _crap,_ there was already a car slotted in beside his, an all-too familiar model of junker that he'd hoped was extinct from the road by now.

 _"Goddammit,_ sorry. Someone parked a piece of shit old Volvo in my space."

 _"Hey,"_ she said into his ear, sounding genuinely offended. "You _said_ to park here, and this _piece of shit_ would curbstomp your Beemer in any distance over a quarter mile."

The door to the interloping car opened and a long, unmistakably stunning leg came out, followed by an exquisite ass in running shorts, a familiar windbreaker, and then Rey's head, phone pressed to her cheek. She slammed the door and leaned against her P1800, apparently waiting to see if he was going to insult her apparently beloved little sportscar some more.

His entire body flushed in mortification and he smacked his free hand against his cringing face.

"Gah. _Sorry._ Sorry, I did _not_ know that was you. My dad had that same model car and I... never mind. Clearly, I'm the one who has to buy the coffee and pie today. As an apology. That was really, um, yeah. How did you get here so fast?"

She sighed audibly and turned in the video, still looking pissed. "I _said_ I was two blocks from Dotty's. I was practically in your driveway when you said I could park here. And just so you know..." Rey looked down in the video, scuffed one of her feet on the concrete, and said, "This car is amazing. The year, the model, all of it were amazing. And she's kind of my baby." She flexed her wrists for some reason and said, "One of my babies, anyway." She wasn't walking toward the diner.

"Maybe you could tell me about her while we're waiting for the pie?" he ventured.

He saw her relent and stand up from the car's fender. Before she said her slightly peevish, "OK, but you'll regret the detail to which I'm capable of rhapsodizing about this vehicle," he was striding toward the door, binder of printouts in his bag.

"I'll be right down," he said, relieved.

When he got into the exhaust-smelling garage, there she was waiting for him, looking a bit put-out still, and so beautiful that he could hardly remember his own name. One winglike eyebrow quirked at him as he approached, and instead of a greeting, she called out, "What's happened when an electrical engineer buys his first BMW?"

Ben had told her his bachelor's degree was in electrical engineering. Was she... telling him a joke? That was good, right? He grinned, "What?"

"He's turned on his douche bit."

He couldn't help but snort a little. Fuck. That was kind of true. "Now you're insulting _my_ car? How are you supposed to maintain the moral high ground now?"

"All's fair in love and war," she said, smiling back, apparently forgiving him via banter. "I have no compunctions about defending the honor of my first love, here. After you've handbuilt the engine in _your_ car, tell me how I should stand for some Philistine insulting her." She was gently polishing the spotty chrome of her side mirror with her thumb. He forced himself to look away from her caressing hand, because it was, shockingly, making him a little hard in his jeans.

"Wait," he said, shaking off his distraction like a slightly wet dog. "You built this engine, too? It's electric?"

"No, no," she said, her smile somehow going a little sad. "I built her engine when I was in high school. All I knew was internal combustion back then. Environmentally speaking, I know I ought to switch it out for the guts of a wrecked Tesla or something, but you can't exactly rely on finding a charging station when you _really_ need one."

He joked, "So this is a getaway car, then."

She looked at the hood and murmured firmly, "Exactly." 

In that sudden shift of mood, something in her burned with such familiarity to Ben that the world seemed to hold its breath for a moment.

He managed to get out, "I know something about that." Then he shifted his bag on his shoulder and quickly changed the subject, "Let's see about pie."

She glanced back up at him with a look of such intense, seemingly unwarranted gratitude for the change of subject that he forgot whatever he might have wondered about Rey's need for an escape vehicle, and happily gestured toward the street.

* * *

Dotty's had a line out the door, so as they queued up, he did as promised and said, "So, tell me about her--what do you love about your car?"

From the look she gave him, he'd finally said the right thing.

"You mean, why the model, or why _her?"_

"Her, I guess. My dad told me way more than I wanted to know about the model when I was 8."

She huffed good-naturedly. "You were apparently a Philistine even then. How could you not want to know about a car that's cute, fast, _and_ has achieved the highest mileage in the world? There's a P1800 that has three million miles and counting on it."

"I managed somehow. Your car isn't the one with three million miles on it, is it?" he teased.

"No," she said, shifting her backpack on her shoulder. "I'll actually never know her real mileage. The police towed her into our family business from where she'd been abandoned in the desert, probably by whomever'd stolen her. The speedometer had been wiped."

Ben practically choked on his tongue. "It was _stolen?"_ he managed to say. The similarities were un-fucking-canny. The murmuring line of people around them seemed too close, suddenly.

She shrugged. "The vehicle ID number had been removed a long time before, by the look of the metal scar, so it was either stolen, or somebody's actual crime car. The police said if no one claimed it in six months, it belonged to us. Once she was mine, it took bloody forever to get a new VIN, but now she's legit."

The coincidence was too weird. The paint color was spot on, even if black was a common color for the vintage. And it would be just like his dad to remove his VIN so that it would be harder to make a case against him if his car was found on the scene of something shady. Ben desperately wanted to ask if there'd been a pair of gold-plated dice hanging from the rearview, but he _really_ didn't want to think of her driving Han's car. He'd let it be a mystery then.

"So, uh, then you rebuilt the engine?" he asked.

"No, I _built_ the engine," she said, looking up at him as they shuffled in line toward the diner's glass door. "She was totally neglected, ignored, everything all rusted shut from not being taken care of, but I popped the hood, and that tiny little car had this absolutely massive, limited edition Hellcat aluminum block V8 in it. There were only a handful of these engines ever made, and the potential..." She shook her head, while Ben's reeled for other reasons. "It _killed_ me seeing her frozen up like that. The second she was available, I found a way to secretly buy her. Then I snuck in and took the block out, took just stupidly precise measurements, and remachined it to increase the bore size and get rid of the heat damage. Then I bought some titanium alloy stock with my race winnings, and machined _that_ into new pistons to fit. I built a three-liter supercharger for it and upgraded literally everything on the rest of the engine and drive train, from the belts to the differential. The only thing that's left that was original is the block itself. Whoever she belonged to before, she's _mine_ now."

He wanted to say, _When you love something that much, isn't that what should happen? It should belong to you, shouldn't it?_ And, _Why,_ wh _y was it a secret? What are all your_ s _ecrets, you remarkable woman?_ But, he didn't.

"How old were you?" he asked, instead.

"Seventeen."

"You--" He had to stop himself and try again. "You built your first engine when you were _seventeen?"_

"Oh no," she said blithely, "I wasn't going to make _that_ engine my first build. I would've completely wrecked it. I did three practice engines first."

He pondered that, shaking his head in amazement. Then something occurred to him. "You did all that but you didn't repaint it?"

She shrugged. "When a car's that fast, it's better to look inconspicuous."

"How fast is she?"

"Track, zero to 60, zero to one mile...?"

"All of them?" he ventured.

She smiled in a way that was strangely hard. "The speedometer I installed tops out at 180, and I've pegged it out on a track... and one other time. Zero to 60 isn't incredibly fast--4.3 seconds. Zero to one mile is a lot better--19.4."

Ben whistled. It really would curbstomp his top-of-the-line Beemer.

_Incredibly sexy._

They'd gotten to the propped-open glass door of the diner. A harried woman in an apron was taking down names for tables.

"What's the wait for two?" Ben asked her. The woman glanced behind her.

"40 minutes for a table, but a couple'a bar seats are open right now if you want 'em. First come, first serve."

Ben and Rey nodded at each other and practically dove for the seats.

There was a moment when Ben sat first on one of the spinning, sparkly vinyl barstools when he was suddenly shorter than she was. He had a weird, uncomfortably visceral flashback of being below another Omega, and he shivered just a bit in the body-heated diner.

When Rey slid in beside him, though, the feeling fell away. He drew a deep breath as inconspicuously as humanly possible, and _there_ it was--just the faintest hint of the wildflowers and silk and sex he'd scented on the mountain. He neither understood nor liked that she had so little scent. It brought up too many bad memories to be entirely comfortable. With other A's and O's, there was a baseline of understanding and intimacy that came with reading even a normally suppressed scent. It was hard for a non-Beta to lie to one of their fellows because of it. People who suppressed their scents heavily usually had something to hide. But Rey, well... if she did, Ben could only hope that it wasn't something that was meant to hurt him.

After they ordered--Palisade peach pie for her, cherry for him--she said, "Not that you aren't dying to hear about the excellence of my car in the context of other 1960s European sport models, but if I'm going to start fundraising by this fall, maybe we should get started."

He grinned again and said, "I like your initiative, but you don't want to pitch in the fall or early winter, ever. Fourth quarter of the year is the absolute worst possible time to fundraise. You've got about a 2% chance of closing on any money, no matter how good your pitch is. Angel investors are like anybody else--they want to spend the holidays with their families, not loaning out five or six figures there's a good chance they'll never see again."

"Ah. That makes sense." Rey said, and looked down at the counter for a moment. She started unwinding her napkin roll, seemingly to give her hands something to do, and said, "I knew you'd rescue me from my own ignorance." She looked back up, wearing a good-student face that was a little stiff. "What else should I know?"

"There's a lot. Let's just do one rescue at a time." He pulled out the two business plan printouts onto the counter in front of them, and said, "One of these is from when my team and I first started pitching. The other one's from the first time we actually pulled in money. Take a look and tell me which one you think is which."

She picked up the first one. It had a beautiful technical illustration of the sunlight system on the cover. Inside were more drawings, a detailed explanation of how the tech worked, and then a few simple charts about the industry. The back page had brief team bios. The second business plan had the company logo, the logo of an investor club, and "Prepared for Boulder Valley Venture Club" on it. The first four pages were team bios, with long sections about seemingly prestigious industry advisors. The next section was about the solar industry, government subsidies for solar, and competition from traditional electrical products. Then there was a short section about the technology with a few illustrations, and a long section about the market, with tons of charts about financial projections.

She set them down just as their pie and coffee arrived. "Oh, thank god," she said. "Just skimming those made me need pie." She picked up the little pitcher of pure cream that came with each plate and steadily upended the entire thing on her pie. "Not that they're boring," she hurried to say, glancing up as if to see if he was bothered. He knew his face was sort of soft and wondering at watching her gracefully pour about 2000 calories of dairy product onto her dessert.

"They _are_ kind of boring," he said, and poured a little strip of cream down the center of his own pie. He sipped his excellent coffee and watched amusedly as she kept glancing at her pie, obviously debating whether to take a bite first or talk first.

She quickly said, "No, really, at least not the first one. I know that's the one that would have convinced me to put money down." Then she scooped up a dripping bite of pie, said, "Tell me why that's not the one, though, because I know it must not be," and put the pie in her mouth. Instantly, her eyes went wide in something that looked like shock, then she closed them tight, put a hand over her mouth and _whimpered._

She must've been OK, because she'd started chewing, but she looked like she was either in pain or someone had their head between her legs under the counter. 

_"Ohph my gob,"_ she muttered behind her hand. _"Gob._ Dis pieph."

Ben took a bite of his and said, "I think you must've gotten the better pie. Mine's good, but not _that_ good."

She opened her eyes, looked at him fiercely, and pulled his spoon out of his hand. She used it to scoop up a big hunk of her pie, dripping in cream, and said, after she'd swallowed, "Eat this. _Please_ eat this." She turned the handle of the spoon so that he'd take that instead of letting her feed him, but watched eagerly as he put the bite in his mouth.

The explosion of extreme peachy tartness, buffered by the buttery crust and luscious mouthfeel of the sweet cream, was amazing. "Damn," he said, mouth full. "Tha's really fuckin' goo' pie."

She laughed, seeming giddy with pleasure, "Right?! Jesus, I'm so glad you liked it." She took another bite, moaned, waved down the waitress as she passed, and gestured at her pie. "Would you bring us another of these, please? And a box?"

Ben smiled. "You don't mind that the crust is going to be soggy when you take it home?"

"Oh, it's not for me," Rey instantly said. "You're taking the cherry pie home. You're eating the good stuff now."

"Oh, no, you should--"

 _"Ben,"_ she said seriously, as if passing on to him lifesaving advice, "when you have the opportunity to have the best pie of your life, never pass it up."

He was moaning inside from the cascade of entendres in this whole experience, but he simply nodded in agreement. "You're absolutely right."

"Now, about fundraising..."

"Mm, right," he said around a mouthful of not-the-best-of-his-life cherry pie. He wiped his mouth and said, "The second business plan is the type that gets funded."

She looked at him over her coffee cup and said, "That makes no sense to me."

"It's because investors invest in teams, not technology. Most of the time, they know they'll never understand how a specific product actually works, because they're not engineers, and unless you're Elon Musk, they know that an individual designer has pretty much no chance of succeeding on their own. They want a group of people with a track record of business success. And, they assume that if big industry experts are onboard with your team and financial projections, then you have a good chance of making it big."

Rey crossed her arms and sighed. "So, team, and industry advisors. I have a team, but I think investors aren't going to be into a bunch of grad students."

"Depends on who they are. Are any of them rich kids?"

"Oh no," she cringed. "Yes, two of them. A pair of massively entitled football playing identical twin frat boys who I was planning to absolutely _not_ hire after graduation."

"Don't if they're actually destructive, but if you do, their relatives and their parents' friends are almost definitely going to be your first investors."

She groaned. "For that reason _only,_ I'll consider it. I was really looking forward to seeing the back of them."

"Seriously, whatever problem you have with them, it's probably worth working it out. Negotiating boundaries and standards with them could be really good practice for when the business is actually starting up, and when you only have a few people, it takes a huge proportion of your resources to replace one of them, much less two. It's better to make the relationships work until you can afford the time to hire and train new people."

"All right," she said. "They're not _terrible_ engineers, and maybe I can work with their attitudes. At least I have some good people to balance them out. We're not totally soaked in alphelone."

He stiffened a little at that. "You know you're going to have to deal with a lot of Alpha males in the automotive industry, right?"

She looked at him flatly. "You know that I'm _entirely_ aware of such things, right?"

He knew that was blatantly mansplaining, but he felt himself getting heated and couldn't let it go. "I just really don't like hearing about hiring and firing based on designation."

Her pretty mouth tightened. "I'm not sure what you're on about, because that was obviously not what I was saying, but you should know that my _entire life_ is about having to go around less qualified Alphas so that Omegas and Betas don't get pushed out of things we're entirely qualified to do. My best engineer on the team is another Omega, and the Betas are all at least as good as the Alphas, but they don't shove it in everyone's faces."

All the pleasure seemed to have gone out of the room. He _knew_ what was happening, and tried to back it down. "Sorry," he sighed, and took a deep breath. "I just get upset when I think about people not being allowed to use their potential."

"Well," she retorted, "if Alphas want to use their potential on my team, they have to actually demonstrate it and work _with_ the rest us instead of rattling on about how brilliant they are and acting like the rest of us are their servants, like those two do."

"That..." he swallowed. "That sounds annoying. I hope you can work it out with them, if only for the investment opportunities. And what I said was out of line. It was about... past experiences I've had."

She looked like she wanted to say something about that, and then shook her head and took what looked like a defiantly big bite of pie. Her whole body softened as she chewed and swallowed, then she said, "It's fine. I know what it's like to be... constrained because of designation. However, I'm going to improve my mood by eating the entire rest of my pie while you talk. Please, enlighten me further about the intricacies of business plans."

The pie seemed to do the trick of turning the conversation around. They spent almost two hours at the counter, plowing through all three pieces of pie, it turned out, plus half a dozen cups of coffee between them, as they went through the business plans page by page. Ben marveled at how enjoyably it all went from that point, how carefully she listened, how she pushed back fiercely against ideas he expressed badly, how appreciative she was when he said something well, how enjoyable it was to wrestle with her mind--and to watch her eat. Sitting there with her was like kayaking in the ocean--he felt himself constantly being pulled along by underwater forces while watching a display of infinitely shifting beauty. When her phone alarm beeped right at the two-hour mark, he realized that she must've planned this hard stop and felt inordinately disappointed.

"And now I turn into a pumpkin," she said, looking at her phone. "I've got to train for a few hours and then get up to the lab. I'm meeting the whole team for a work session."

"And you're going to negotiate with the frat boys?" he reminded her.

"I am, and I'm going to _like it,"_ she said, wrinkling her nose in mostly faux disgust.

He'd planned this part. "So, next time, we should talk about how to get industry advisors for your team."

She paused for just a heartbeat, face lighting up so subtly he would've missed it if he hadn't been studying her like his personal Rosetta Stone. Then her expression tightened a little and she rubbed her wrists as if they were cold. "Another morning next week, then?"

His mind raced, then he said as casually as he could manage, "I actually was going to hike up South Arapahoe Peak early this Wednesday. If you started around 9:00, we could meet at the summit and hang out in the altitude while we talk, and then get down by noon."

She looked startled that he'd suggest such a thing and stumbled as she thought it through. "Huh... wow, that's, um... that's a really good idea, actually. I don't have class. I'd have to get back down the mountain on time and all, so I can study for this test I have on Thursday, but that would really work. If you don't mind--"

"No, it would be perfect. I'd love that."

"Then I'll bring snacks," she said. "Thank you, for today, Ben. Thank you so much."

"You are _completely_ welcome," he said. "I had a great time. I'll look forward to Wednesday."  
  
And then, he watched her go, but this time, thank all the gods of every designation, he knew he'd get to see her again.


	15. Shelter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, friends! May yours be filled with pleasure, incredible food, as much romance as you want, and a little suspense. 💜💙💜

2019

Ben practically bounded back to his house. They were friends now, or at least officially friendly acquaintances, weren't they? They'd had a mostly pleasant meeting, she'd insisted that he eat her (cream-dripping peach) pie _(JesusMaryandJoseph),_ and they had a second meeting coming up. Which meant he was allowed to text her, right? If he had a good reason?

He created that reason with a vengeance.

He immediately started studying the heavy equipment and electric car industries, and called a dozen people from his solar days, who promised to call other people for him.

That evening, he texted,

 _We're going to be talking about  
_ _industry advisors on Weds, right?  
_ _You mind if I call a few people  
_ _who might be interested in your project?_

She answered,

_Not at all. That would be amazing.  
Thank you, Ben._

Loath to scare her off, he stopped there and got back to work. He needed to seem _casual. Calm. Not pushy._

People started calling him back on Monday morning. Their answers gave him enough information to reach out to a bunch more people, and he called in some heavy favors. While he was doing his daily rounds with the heavy bag in his home gym, he paused once, the bag ponderously swinging back at his legs, when he realized that to really do this right, he'd have to call his mother to see if she could get some people on the Senate Energy and Transportation committees interested. He watched the bag swing for a moment, and shook his head. He couldn't quite force himself to do it. It had been a few months since they'd talked, and that was frankly not long enough. Breathing a word to her about Rey would be... too much. For now.

On Monday afternoon, he texted Rey,

 _Got a few bites from potential advisors.  
_ _Nothing settled but will have some  
_ _people for you to consider when we meet._

She said,

_I'm overwhelmed with yr generosity,  
again. Thank u so much._

_Happy to do it,_ he replied, and he was.

  
On Tuesday morning, he texted,

 _If you could have literally anyone  
_ _in the world get interested in your  
_ _engine, who would it be?_

_???? Hard question. Will think about it._

Hours later, she wrote back.

 _OK, cool thought exercise. Harlan Jeffs,  
_ _CEO of Caterpillar. Elon Musk. Gam Hyun,  
_ _CEO of KoreTec, the biggest electric  
_ _car battery supplier in the world (it's  
_ _really hard to get batteries produced  
_ _for new vehicles), and Mohammed  
Abdelnour, _ _NYT tech reporter._

When Ben read that, he said a triumphant _"Yes!"_ in the silence of his apartment. To work off his victorious, nervous energy, he worked out for a couple of hours, lifting weights and pounding along the treadmill. Then he started cooking. Rey may have said that she'd bring snacks to their meetup on the mountain the next day, but Ben had seen twice now that she was _moved_ by food--relaxed, softened, and maybe even aroused. He was a little desperate to see that pleasurably overwrought look from the weekend on her face again, and he wanted her to associate that feeling with _him._ If it was through food for now, fine, but he had his ambitions. He also suspected that whatever her background was, it wasn't just new clothes that she'd been shorted. Food might just mean a lot to her because it used to be scarce in her life.

Ben was up before dawn on Wednesday, putting final touches on food, grooming himself to within an inch of his life, and then leaving for the mountains. When he arrived at the end of the dirt road at the trailhead, he again breathed in the massive, clean beauty of the landscape, letting the dawn light bless him. The delicate, early-morning scents in the conifers were so familiar, so sweet, that it was like waking up innocently in his childhood bed.

Birdsong filled the still-damp air as he hiked up the mountain under rapidly color-shifting skies. By the time he was halfway up, this time wearing just his daypack filled with a small notebook, water bottles, a tightly rolled blanket, and lunch for two, he felt so free he started to jog a little. It was _much_ harder than hiking, but in the flatter sections of trail, he could really get some speed up. The breath rasping in and out of his lungs cleansed him from the inside out, and he felt rejuvenated in a way that he hadn't imagined. He had to stop, suck air, rest, and then hike again whenever the trail steepened or he crossed rocky ground, but the little experiment was something he was eager to tell Rey about.

By 8:30 he was near the summit, and he kept glancing down the mountainside to see if Rey was coming. Sure enough, around 8:50, just as he summited, he spotted a familiar red dot moving rapidly through the scrub at treeline. Watching her climb the last mile to the top was a wonder. There was almost no soil at that elevation, and while he'd carefully stepped from rock to unsteady rock in the steep boulder field, she flew over the same terrain as it were a sidewalk. She scrambled up 70-degree rock faces without using her hands, leapt chasms he'd warily detoured around, and moved with a relaxed grace that he'd _never_ had, no matter how hard he'd trained. He shook his head, feeling not like Stork Boy again, the callow oaf, but like Kylo Ren, the broken, deceived tool. He'd worn his most muscle-enhancing T-shirt, shorts that showed his powerful quads, and eschewed a hat so that his hair, his one good feature, looked as decent as humanly possible. And then here came Rey, in her usual running shorts, baggy race T-shirt, and fluffy ponytail, looking like grace personified and sex on wheels. He was utterly outmatched.

He had to look away for a moment as she neared the summit, just look out at the wilderness spread below him to reassure himself that he was still OK, that he still belonged in this world. He gripped his fists, breathed, and made himself calm down.

She bounded up the last few yards of the trail, tapped the bronze summit plaque on the ridgeline (a semi-compulsory act for mountain jocks), and slowed to a panting walk. She gave a little wave as she approached the ledge where he'd set out the blanket and food. When she got close enough for him to read her face, he saw that she swallowed, rubbed her hands on her shorts, and said gently, "Hey."

She looked soft, tentative. He stood up, still devastated, and towered over her. He'd talk with her about business stuff, the things he'd brought, and then give up on the rest... there was no point.

Then, Rey stepped into his arms, and hugged him.

* * *

It was pure impulse. She'd run so far, so hard, to get here, after a week of combined terror and desire swirling around in her body. She was exhausted emotionally, but calmed by her run, and unafraid thanks to her runner's high. And when she saw him, alone, with food spread out for what looked like ten, staring out over the vast forest looking so sad, it was like she was looking at herself, at the scared kid she'd been all her life, full of secrets and lies and burning, teeming life. He stood up in front of her, ready to speak, smelling like gut-wrenching loss, but whatever was going to come out of his mouth, she didn't want to hear it. She just wanted to comfort him.

She purposely hadn't hugged an unpaired Alpha in... years, at least, despite the fact that Boulder was a very huggy town, and she was constantly touching her friends. This hug didn't last long. Long enough to press her face to his chest, to pull the almost shocking breadth of him into her arms, to gently hold his heat against her body, like she would have held Rose or Finn on their worst days. Long enough to feel that _surge_ between them, this time the jolt mellower. Long enough to get a deep, brain-filling breath of his many scents--the clean citrus of his laundry soap, the woodsiness of his aftershave, and the crushingly delicious, cunt-warming scent of Alpha Ben Solo--cedar and a fantastic meal and a lush pheromonal musk that made her dizzy. Long enough for him to put his vast arms around her shoulders and back, to pull her to him, and to rest his jaw on the top of her head, like a big, warm dog. One deep breath together, two, then he whispered, "Thank you," and they gently let each other's body go.

Shy and befuzzled by his scent and his touch, she looked down. Her whole body was warm and humming. The blanket... he'd brought a blanket. And food.

She could always talk about food. "You brought better snacks than I did," she said stupidly.

"I like feeding... people."

That rang some bell in her mind, but suddenly, she was feeling ten million things, and the only one she was willing to look at was hunger. She sat down suddenly, while he was still standing, and found herself beside his giant hiking boots, with him tall as a redwood above her. That sort of thing usually made her panicky, but in this warm, lovely, awkward moment, all she felt was gratitude for the way his body was sheltering her from the arctic slipstream blowing over the ridgeline. She didn't have to look at him. She didn't. Not at his long legs, not at his... Nope.

"My apples and turkey jerky seem a little unnecessary," she said weakly.

"Save them for the trip down," he said, and sat carefully next to her on the blanket-covered granite. "Wait--you do actually eat during a run? I guess a lot of runners don't..."

She laughed a little brittly. "If I didn't before, during, and after I pretty much wouldn't eat. And I ran like thirty miles already, so I'm bloody starving."

"You... _what?"_

"This morning. I ran from my house," she said, taking off her backpack and resting it behind her, to help keep her lower back warm.

He looked gobsmacked. "You ran from _Boulder?"_

She'd had to explain this to people a million times, so she knew what was coming. She undid and retightened one shoelace as she said, "I have to train four hours a day, at least. And I wanted to just get it out of the way so we'd have time to talk." _Aaaaaand cue the incredulous rant about how nuts I am and how weird ultrarunning is, blah blah blah..._

He just blinked at her, said, "Then I want to make it worth your while," and handed her a sandwich.

_Oh._

_Ben wasn't like that._

_Oh._

She ventured a glance at his somehow hopeful-looking face, and then took the sandwich. It was... kind of beautiful. Thick French bread, some kind of still-warm shaved meat, white cheese, fresh basil leaves and lettuce to fluff it up, and something that smelled like horseradish sauce dripping along one edge. It was wrapped in an honest-to-god red gingham napkin that matched the blanket. The smell wafting off it was mind-bending, and a little like that delicious, foody component of Ben's own scent. Suddenly, any awkwardness vanished. She looked up again, really looked, and there was the beautiful world laid out around her, forested valleys and grey mountains splayed under the blue, blue sky and its air pressing on her skin. It felt intensely sensual to just sit there, head filled with delicious sight and smells of food and now-calm Ben, her whole body surrounded by the chilliness but warmed on one side with this big Alpha's radiating body heat. Her muscles were still buzzing from the run, and she'd just hugged someone. It felt _special,_ like she should remember it.

"Thank you," she said, meaning, _for all this,_ and took a bite her sandwich. The savory-sharp-crisp-herbaceousness that filled her mouth and took over her senses was so lovely she could have cried. She chewed, and it was _voluptuous_ , with new textures and flavors unfolding every time her teeth shifted. There wasn't just basil in it--there were a couple of other fresh herbs at least, and the meat was _smoked,_ and was that _goat cheese?_ She couldn't help but moan as the first swallow went into her belly, pushing out every bit of anxiety with it. She shut her eyes to experience it more completely, took another bite, knowing she was making weird sounds, couldn't help it, didn't care. Pleasure--simple animal pleasure--was so rare in her life that she was going to wallow in it.

After the third bite, she was capable of opening her eyes, and there was Ben, right in front of her, expression tender and serious. Around the headful of sandwich flavors, she could smell the bright evergreen scent of his happiness. He was holding out to her a thermos cup of... _hot chocolate._ With _marshmallows._

"It's an unconventional pairing, but I recommend it," he said, smiling.

She took the warm cup from his hand, carefully avoiding his fingers, and sipped. It was so rich and velvety that it tasted like he'd made it with pure cream instead of milk.  
  
 _Yes_ , _Alpha,_ her body said. _Feed me._ She glanced at his hands resting on his knees, so close beside her, so strong-looking, and she suddenly deeply regretted not letting herself touch them. Yearned for it bodily, in fact.

_DANGER._

Her heart chilled and she schooled her expression. She drew her thighs together as subtly as she could, so there was no chance of her bare knee actually touching his.

 _This is not safe, you're not safe, he's an Alpha, keep it fucking cool Niima. Be_ careful, _be_ perfect.

She'd told herself this over and over. She had to hold herself together. She couldn't let herself _be here_ if she didn't hold it together.

_I want to be here. Please._

_So hold it. The FUCK. TOGETHER._

_And say something for god's sake. Be polite._

"I think this is the nicest lunch I've ever had. Thank you."

_Well, that was awkward. Which was fine._

"Don't hold back," he said, unperturbed. "There are four sandwiches. And dessert." He nudged the bag next to him with his foot, and something clinked inside. "Creme brûlée."

"That... was... Veryniceofyoutomake." She purposely took a bite of sandwich so huge she couldn't possibly talk through it as he calmly poured himself a cup of the hot chocolate.

_He had to make my FAVORITE. WHY IS HE MAKING THIS SO HARD???"_

They ate in silence for a few bites, the epicurean perfection of the food barely helping to soothe her.

 _He looks so beautiful. Those_ arms, _Beta Christ. And those shoulders._

_And this fucking food._

_And his scent._

_I want to climb on his lap._

_HOLD. IT. TOGETHER._

_And on his--_

_HOLD IT TOGETHER OR YOU LEAVE RIGHT NOW._

She pulled up her knees and put an arm around them, shielding her body from him. She bit her tongue a little and dug her fingernails into her palm so the pain would clear her head. The cold air up here was helping, at least.

"Oh," he said, looking startled. "You must be freezing. Here."  
  
And before she could even move, he'd taken the flannel shirt from around his waist and draped it over her shoulders and arms. Just like that, she was floating in a cloud of his delicious musk, in the warmth of his body, as if the man himself were _cuddling_ her. She drew herself in like a startled anemone, but that sank her further into the wonderful cave of his leftover body heat. The gentle sensuality of it was _danger_ and _pleasure_ and _fear_ and _safety_ and she avoided those dark eyes, mentally scrambling for some excuse now to _get the hell up and run._

Ben abruptly started looking in his backpack, seemingly totally oblivious to what she was going through. "Ah-ha! There it is."

By the time he'd turned back to her, she'd composed her face again, with the skill of long habit. She would say she had to leave because--

"So, you said I could make a few calls for you, so I got ahold of some people who're interested in potentially joining your advisory board. Here's the list."

 _Right,_ she thought with dreadful relief. _That's why we're here. BUSINESS._

He held out a folded piece of paper. 

_Not this again._

Assiduously avoiding his fingers, she took the paper and unfolded it.

 _Tom Barker-Reynolds, Executive VP of Caterpillar, Technology Partnerships Division  
_ _Sarai Farghal, VP Solar Research, Tesla  
_ _Tim Bridger, Director of Business Development, KoreTec USA  
_ _Heather Krein, NYT editor, tech, Denver bureau_

There was full contact information listed under each person's name.

She could feel her jaw dropping open like a rusty trap door.

_Holy shit._

_Holy_

_fucking_

_Shit._

Her nervous system was roiling with _something,_ but her mind was blank. Suddenly, she was just a terrified 15-year-old again, and all she could think about was Mr. Walker and Maz. Mr. Walker and Maz, who had turned her upside down and then made her _life_ happen--her secret kept safe, her running career, her ability to go to college, even her fucking _car_ \--who at every turn had been so utterly selfless with her. And here was one more person offering her her heart's current desire. _A hot, kind, powerful Alpha man,_ offering her her heart's desire.

Ben took in her stunned look, and said, sounding a little smug, "I couldn't get the ones on your list, but these people will get you to them if we play your cards right. Tim Bridger is actually a friend of mine. We worked together a long time ago."

She looked at him. The vulnerable, aching man she'd scented a little while ago, the man she'd held in that strange, silent embrace, was gone. Here was the Ben Solo she'd met every time they'd come together--confident, direct, _freely offering her something she needed. Something she desperately wanted._ He was somehow simultaneously the most and least Alpha person she'd ever met.

She swallowed.

 _Sometimes wanting_ wasn't _the worst thing. Sometimes, it lead to_ having.

* * *

Rey's expressions had swung through half a dozen extremes since she'd touched the summit plaque--tender, adorably awkward, ecstatic, tense, stunned, and now... something inchoate that he would have killed to have been able to properly read through scent. Something intense that wasn't quite evolved yet, he suspected. He knew she was suspicious of him, like any reasonable young woman would be when offered something momentous by a man she barely knew. But maybe, just maybe, that was fading. Maybe the woman who'd hugged him, who'd trusted him enough to come out into the woods with him, was winning out over the woman who needed to be suspicious.

She said quietly, "Thank you. I don't know how to thank you."

"I just made some calls," he said, playing it very casual. "It wasn't a big deal."

"But... it _is_ a big deal," she said, looking up, looking almost afraid. "It's the biggest deal, to me. Whether they end up helping me or not, _you_ did."

"I really wanted to," he said simply. _There. Let her hear that._ He let it sink in for a second, and then added, "Anyway, they'll help you. I haven't even seen your tech, and I still know they'll want to get involved. I'll show you how to work with them, and it'll go great. "

She licked her lips and said, in a way that seemed to take some extra courage, "You should. You should come to my lab. See it."

Maybe it was her expression. Maybe the wind changed, and some tiny amount of her scent was filtering to him. Whatever it was, he suddenly understood, in a way that he hadn't really imagined before, that letting him in scared her. He didn't know why, but he suspected that it had to do with Alphas, and men in general. He felt a surge of strength through his body. He softened his posture, made himself smaller next to her, but scooted so that he was better sheltering her from the wind. He topped up her cup, dropped in a few more marshmallows, and said, "It would be an honor."

* * *

They talked, while eating, in the bracing cold breeze of the summit, for hours. By the end of the conversation, she was so full of food and new information that she could barely imagine balancing her overstuffed self on the way down the now cloud-shrouded mountain. He'd told her that he'd found that potential advisors had been more trusting throughout his entire relationship with them if he first approached them through someone who already knew them, so she'd need to go to industry networking events to make connections. Advisors had wanted to be treated like respected authorities, but they'd also wanted to feel like he was _almost_ their equal. That meant she should dress slightly lower-status than they did when she spent time with them. In the West, especially California, where powerful people wore casual clothes, he'd learned to dress significantly more formally than they did. On the East coast, where powerful people wore suits, he'd worn equally formal suits that were somewhat less expensive. She should wear good-looking, expensive clothes and shoes, but nothing egregious. Anyone she was considering should sign a nondisclosure agreement _before_ she sent them anything even remotely technical. She should get to know their personal assistants immediately, but not their wives unless specifically invited to... The list went on and on.

As she licked the spoon of her last delectable scrapings of creme brûlée from the red ramekin, she sighed and said, "So, this all sounds really good, but how are the rules different for me than for you? Because you know they are."

He wiped his mouth with his napkin, obviously thinking. She wanted to touch those lips.

"You mean how they're different for a young, beautiful, Omega woman?" he asked.

She flushed with a feeling so big and bright it was hard to bear. She looked down, trying to hide what must be a cherry red blush by carefully folding her napkin back around her fork. She had to clear her throat. "Something like that."

"I honestly don't know." Then he said, staring off into the far distance, "My mother would. She has a lot of power, and she started gathering most of it when she was younger than you, and beautiful, and about 5'1" in shoes."

"She sounds amazing," she said, thinking about what kind of a mother could raise a man like Ben.

He just picked at his bootlace for a moment, not looking at her. "She wasn't a great mother. But a lot of people think she's a hero. Maybe she is. She'd love _you."_

She was studying that odd expression he was wearing, contemplating being loved by somebody's mom, when she felt the breeze go colder, and heard first one soft _click,_ then another, then a few more.

Rey glanced around, puzzled, and then saw the tiny white hailstone that had just landed between her feet.

"Oh shit, it's hailing!" she said, and started pushing all the lunch things rapidly back into Ben's pack. The stones that were now tapping a little more rapidly down around them were barely bigger than the head of a pin, but she knew that up there, weather could escalate from innocuous to deadly in a matter of minutes. They both rolled off the blanket, Ben stuffed it into his pack, got to their feet, zipped up and strapped their backpacks on, and they were on their running.

They dashed toward the trail, and for the first 50 yards of the ridgeline, Ben seemed to have no trouble keeping up. Then they hit the trail itself and the technical, rocky precipice down. The slope was like a cliff leaned slightly on its side, massive rocks jutting over each other with potentially leg-breaking gaps in between. Most fit hikers would spend a leisurely hour picking their way down it, but Rey could've practically sprinted it if she hadn't been waiting for Ben.

The hail started getting bigger, and the rhythm of it was starting to sound like typewriter keys smacking paper as someone pounded along at 40 words per minute, then 45, then 50, drowning out every other sound.

"Don't wait for me," Ben yelled to her over rising wind, "Just get below treeline."

_What? As if!_

"Don't be ridiculous!" she yelled at him. There were tiny ballbearings of ice underfoot now, and it would be so easy for him to get hurt. She kept imagining him slipping into a crevice and snapping a bone. For him to be hurt would be unbearable to her. She could hear him thudding along behind her, even over the wind and hail, and realized he had no idea what he was doing.  
  
"Put your feet down lightly!" she yelled as she ran. "If you start to slip just take another step as fast as you can. Don't commit your weight, and keep your knees high!"

She could hear his gait shift, and then he was going faster, so she sped herself up. She _hated_ not being able to see him as they ran down, but the trail was barely wide enough for one person, much less two running side by side, and she absolutely didn't want to fall like she had when they'd met. She listened carefully to his footsteps, slowing down or speeding up to let him keep pace with her. The wind was gusting harder, whipping her now wet ponytail into her face, and the hail was getting denser and bigger. It smarted where it hit, and she was getting colder. This was completely normal stuff for her, but she hated to think of Ben dealing with it.

Soon, they were at the end of the switchbacks, and the trail became a long straight section made of cobblestone-sized loose rocks that were interspersed with bigger slabs. Ben's sprint was clearly spent, so instead of flying down the trail in a perfectly straight line to save distance like she normally would, landly almost weightlessly on the rounded stones, she led him on a meandering path from steady footing to steady footing and kept at a reasonable pace, listening every single second for the telltale hissing sound of someone falling.

"Break?" She shouted over the wind. The hail was still getting bigger, and starting to _hurt,_ slamming into her head and shoulders with stinging pain, biting at her bare hands and legs.

"What?!" He yelled back.

"Do you need to stop for a break?!"

"No, I'm fine! Why are you going so slow?! Get out of here!"

The storm clouds were throwing down random bigger stones now, some as big as marbles, and the ground was going white.They both knew the only way to get out of this was to get into the trees, which were close to a mile away.

"I won't leave you!" she yelled, peeved, and suddenly Ben was right behind her, really pushing himself, and she was not going to argue with him about going too fast because it was impossible to think now around the full-body sting of the hail. Feeling an Alpha male thundering along behind her like a bull elephant was telling her subconscious, her whole body, to _fly_ , to run as hard and fast as she could for whatever finish line was ahead of her, but she reined herself in, this was _Ben,_ and she let him keep pace. She could barely see now, barely hear. It felt like she was being stung by an army of wasps, and so she just ran, exactly fast enough to keep Ben right behind her. They pelted through the hail, faster and faster, yelping sometimes when a really big stone punched something sensitive. A few little trees were ahead and they sprinted for the closet one. The tiny conifer was densely needled but barely wide enough to give any shelter, and Rey skidded as far underneath it as she could, ripping her pack off so she could fit. The branches barely covered half her body, and she expected that Ben would slot in under the other side of the tree. Instead he slid in beside her, went down on one knee, braced an arm on the narrow trunk, and spread his huge, dripping body above her.

In the sudden stillness under his torso, she yelled, "Are you insane?? Get to shelter!"

"I am," he screamed nonsensically, now being machine-gunned by hail. He was heavy and trembling above her, gasping for breath, heating the whole space under the tree with his animal warmth. She could hear the thudding of hailstones hitting him, but he stayed rock steady above her. The hail roared even harder, a huge stone slammed into a bit of her exposed calf, and she yiped. She gave in and retreated completely under him, shrinking in to not touch him too much, but there was no way to avoid it--he hunched down away from the hail, and his long torso was spooning her whole left side and half her back. A man--a big man--pressed up against so much of her was something she'd avoided from the moment she was left with Unkar. The joy of it was _shocking._ His warmth, the utterly foreign _largeness_ of him, the delicious shifting of his dense muscles was so _real_ and _alive_ she could barely take it in. She had hungered to touch him, and now she had no choice but to do it, and it was exultant. The energy that flowed between their cold, bare limbs and icy wet torsos filled her and lit her up, as if part of her was literally illuminated by their connection. His scent was shocked, pained, over-exercised, but still so wonderful, like someone had painted a little balsamic vinegar on a buttery steak. He couldn't have been noticing much of what was happening under him, because he was still being pummeled by ice rocks, but this suddenly ranked in the top ten or so most electrifying moments of _her_ life.

The rattling of the hail suddenly sounded less like the inside of a popcorn popper during peak cornsplosion and more like the end of the batch, when all the old maids were rattling around, waiting to see if they'd get a final chance to burst. Then, as it did in the Rockies, the hail almost instantaneously stopped. A little rain trickled down, barely wetter than fog, but the real storm was past.

Ben simply let go of the tree trunk and collapsed onto the hail-carpeted ground. "Fuck," he groaned into the sudden near silence, "that was like being eaten by weasels."

It was so goofy and hilarious that she couldn't stand it. She giggled, snorted, let the giggle break into a full, cackling laugh, and then she was hugging him again, and they were laughing wildly together.

* * *

Ben, by some miracle, was practically wrestling in hail slush with a drenched, beautiful Omega. Apparently, touching Rey was now A-OK, since she'd just launched herself out from under their tree at him and she was convulsing with giggles as she hugged him in a one-armed death grip. He was sliding around in the ice, she was sliding around in the ice, and she couldn't stop laughing so _he_ couldn't stop laughing. His sides were starting to ache along with the pummeled rest of him, and he was high as a fucking kite with joy. When the hilarity of weasel-based assault started to finally wane, they just flopped limp, chuckling, into the scrub grass that was reappearing under the ice.

She flipped onto her back, pillowing her head against his ribs. He had his hands tucked behind his head, restraining himself from petting her hair, and he was grinning up at the blessed clouds. Their hair was dripping, they had spruce needles glued all over them, their clothes were stuck to them, and probably neither of them had dry things in their packs, but this was just heaven.

"Oh my god," she breathed, still laughing a little, "look at us! We're speckled!" She briefly kicked a long, long leg up in the air to illustrate. She was peppered with tiny bruises along her thigh and shin. He looked down at the stretch of his own thigh he could see from here. Yep, same.

"My building has a hot tub," he said happily. "We should go use it."

She went so still it was like she'd disappeared. All the life and movement gone. The connection broken. She was _holding her breath_ , he realized.

 _Goddammit._ He breathed steadily, breathed for her. _Breathe with me, sweetheart. Please._

She let out the breath. "I actually have to take an ice bath," she said abruptly, and sat up, facing away from him. She crawled back under the tree to retrieve her little backpack from where she'd pushed it off. "After hard sprints like that, when I get too hot, I have to take an ice bath to keep my fine rotator muscles from tightening up because I can't get injured, because I have a race coming up and--"

"Rey," he interrupted, staring back up at the sky, "have you noticed what we're sitting in?"

He rolled over on his side for effect and gestured grandly down the length of his body, which was submerged almost two inches deep in icemelt and hail. She looked at him blankly, then looked down at herself, at her shins and ankles submerged in the same goop, and made a _mmmph_ sound that puffed out her cheeks.

_Mmph._

_Snrrrk._

She put her hand over her mouth. Her eyes were bulging a little. She _snorted._

_Oh thank god._

She was obviously trying to suppress it, but this laugh, like so much else about her, was irrepressible. She fell back down onto her butt and finally gave in, taking her hand away from her mouth and shaking all over with laughter again.

* * *

She'd given him her excuse! Her patented hot-tub-refusal excuse-- _sorry, have to take an ice bath--_ which had shrunk the balls of literally every dude who'd ever tried to get her naked in a hot tub, ratcheted them right up into the guys' horrified bodies like little hot air balloons, and it turned out, _she was already taking one with him._ That unpleasant task she had to do so she could run forever and keep herself safe, that she winced every time she grudgingly forced herself to do, she'd been doing it _with him_ without even noticing it.

She laughed, until she realized that it was because she'd been having _so much fun_ with him.

_Because time with Ben was wonderful._

That took the wind out of her a bit, but she was so full of endorphins her smile didn't fade.

"I laugh, but this is serious business, you know, keeping me in shape," she finally stopped chuckling long enough to say. She started scooping handfuls of ice over her hips, knees, and ankles. The cold of it wasn't so bad, since she was already so wet and cold on the outside and so glowing with warmth inside. He wordlessly joined in, heaping it up on her ankles, knees, and hips with his big shovel hands.

"I can only imagine," he said around the slushy sounds. "How long do you have to freeze yourself?"

"Ten minutes," she said and wrinkled her nose, "and then I actually need to start running again if I'm going to have time to study for that differential equations test. I'm going to be such a slug getting down the hill in these wet clothes."

"You're not running home," he said confidently, still laying ice onto her. "I'm driving you."

From anyone else, that deciding-things-for-her schtick would've lasted about one second and been followed by a blistering takedown. But there was something, again, that was making her think of Mr. Walker and Maz, especially Mr. Walker, with his calm, confident selflessness, that made her relax. And he didn't smell overbearing or arrogant. His cedary notes were overlaid with something oceanic... _generosity,_ she decided, and something like scones. _Hope._

"That's daft," she said, though. She would not be Rey if she didn't. "I'm not wrecking your electronic, kangaroo-leather passenger seat. I actually know how much those things cost."

"I am an adult man," he said, looking at her calmly, "which means I have towels in my trunk."

"What, is that the criterion? Towels?"

"You obviously haven't read _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,"_ he countered, and then they were chatting about science fiction, which it turned out they both loved.

Ten minutes later, she set her hands into the slush around her and pushed herself up. Ben was sitting on a rock nearby, and had just finished squeezing the water out of his wool socks while going on about John Varley novels. His feet, like the rest of him, were long, beautifully made, and pale. She had a sudden desire to lick him from sole to ankle to calf to thigh to--and then she cut that thought right off. She offered him a hand up instead, after he got his hiking boots' laces tied.

"I'm amazed that you kept up with me in those," she said.

"You said you weren't going to leave me. I thought I'd better make it worth your while."

That rankled her. They started down the trail, which was wide enough here to go side by side, and she said, "That's the second time you've said that, about making it worth my while to spend time with you, and it's still ridiculous."

He looked genuinely puzzled. "Why is that ridiculous?"

She looked over at him, with his head cocked and dark brow furrowed. "Because you don't need to _do_ anything to be worth my while!"

"Not anymore?" he said, his eyebrows skeptical.

"Not now that I actually know you," she admitted.

"So," he turned and jogged sideways beside her, "the startup stuff is just a perk now?"

She dimpled, and didn't even blush. "Yes, fine, I'll admit it, you're the cake. The mentoring is very, very good, but it's icing now."

"Good thing you can have both," he said, and they were both grinning again, him blazingly, her shyly. She barely noticed that they were both jogging now, too. It seemed so natural to run beside him.


	16. Alphas

When her alarm _tinged_ at 4:45 in the morning, almost two weeks later, Rey blearily rolled over to grab her phone off her nightstand. The lock screen told her, as it had every one of the last 13 mornings, that she was waking up to a text from Ben. She flicked open the screen, already giddy. It had turned out that, thanks to his father, he actually knew quite a bit about mid-century sports cars, and last night he'd had the gall to suggest that the E-series Jaguar might be the best, overall, of the era. She'd replied with one of the endless, snarky car jabs Unkar's shop guys had raised her on.

Rey:   
_< Why was the Jag owner  
_ _so happy? >  
_

Ben:  
 _< Please tell me.>  
_

Rey:  
 _< He drove across the state  
_ _and his XK-E only_ _caught  
on fire twice.>  
  
_

This morning's reply was a meme of Ellen Ripley using her flame thrower on an alien. It said, "Sick burn, baby."

She giggled helplessly and drummed her heels on the mattress while rolling her head around on her pillow, like a cat wriggling in the sunshine of his attention.

After indulging herself with that moment of total boy-crush freakout, she took her suppressant and then did what she'd _made_ herself do every morning since they'd met on the mountaintop; she took her temperature: 98.4. Then she mentally scanned her body for signs of heat. Uterus--no pain, no swollen feeling, no extreme need for dick. Vulva and vaj--no slick beyond the usual, no extreme need for dick. Body overall--not unusually tired, not inexplicably irritable, no extreme need for dick. Sudden _interest_ in dick, absolutely, in a sort of terrified/thrilled way, but yeah, no, not going into heat that day.

With that, she let herself relax. She did not reply, "Very hot," as she wanted. Instead, she wrote: _< C you at 11?>_

She knew he wouldn't get it for hours, so she flicked back through the text thread. It was a mix of car jokes from her, film and book quotes from him, scenery snaps from her runs, and mostly food pics from him. She lingered over some of the actual messages--

Ben:  
 _< Want to eat this? At the  
_ _Farmer's Market and thinking  
_ _of pairing it w/ the savory  
_ _chutney for our lunch today. >_

Rey:  
 _< Thank u a millionX for that  
_ _meal. It may have topped  
_ _the first one. Yr ruining me  
_ _4 all other cooks. >  
  
_

Ben:  
 _< This color reminds me of  
_ _you. Vibrant. Strong. >_

  
Rey:  
 _< This dog's wearing a  
_ _Tesla bandana. Will u  
_ _ask him to b on my  
_ _board of advisors? >_

Ben:  
 _< Sure, he looks like the kind  
_ _of_ _guy Elon Musk would listen  
_ _to when stoned. >_

  
Rey:  
 _< I'm glad u told me to negotiate  
_ _boundaries w/ the Teedos. Can't  
_ _believe how much better they  
_ _r behaving. Yr my personal Alpha  
_ _whisperer. >_

  
Ben:  
 _< Wish you were eating this  
_ _lava cake. The cake wouldn't  
_ _be the only one melting down. >_

  
Rey:  
 _< Wish you could c this sunset  
_ _from top of Bear Mtn. Prettier  
_ _than a tangerine flake 1969  
_ _Corvette. The T-Top, not the  
_ _roadster. >_

  
Ben:  
 _< Wish you could hear this bird  
_ _off my balcony. Pretending to  
_ _be a car alarm, then a key fob,  
_ _then..._

  
Rey:  
 _< Wish you were here to see this..._

  
Ben:  
 _< Wish you were here on..._

  
Rey:  
< _Wish you were here to...  
  
_

Ben:  
 _< Wish you were...  
  
_

Rey:  
 _< Wish you..._

  
Ben:  
 _< You..._

They texted all day long, now, she and Ben.

A lot like she and Finn used to do, before Finn got together with Poe.

But she and Finn hadn't much talked about _wishing._

She clutched the phone tighter when she thought about the fact that at least today she wouldn't be _wishing,_ because she was actually going to get to see him. Her team's lab midterm was in the form of a work-in-progress presentation to car industry honchos who were taking their annual tour of the Automotive Engineering Labs. She'd finagled an invite for Ben, and it was the first time he'd have seen her in this huge part of her life. He'd be there, filling up the room with that vast presence of his, making her feel, she hoped, less nervous.

She and Ben had met for breakfast or lunch in town five times over the past couple of weeks, ostensibly to talk startup stuff, but there was alway so much more to talk about--trails they loved, books and films Ben was catching up on after a lifetime of the Extremely Busy Person's pop-media deprivation, whatever was interesting in the news. Happy things. They'd always met in public, but from the moment they hugged hello to the moment they lingeringly hugged goodbye, it felt like they were in a silent room where no one else existed. The electricity of it was almost unbearable.

But it was _easy,_ too. Like the things they _didn't_ talk about _...._ Ben didn't pry. Ben didn't push. When she skirted around her childhood, or why she didn't do evening events, or why she never, ever took downtime from training, he left it alone. She guessed it was because he had a few secrets himself. It was in his odd silences when the subject of parents came up, and in other curious moments--sometimes when she talked about people she raced with, sometimes when she talked about her car, which was very, apparently, like his father's had been. He was as vague about his adolescence and childhood as she was. She imagined, because of the way he seemed to actively avoid talking about designation now, that he might've had an abusive Essentialist father. She knew that he'd gone to boarding school young and then had been out of the country for a while, and suspected it was to stay away from his family.

Whatever he was being private about, that privateness swirled around her subconscious as _protection._ Whatever the hell was happening between them, it kept feeling _safe_ \--and something _was_ happening. And it was because she's chosen to not run away (though she almost constantly questioned whether perhaps she should) _._ But this thing they were doing, it didn't push hard against her deadly secret. There was no pressuring her for sex. It hadn't made her go into heat, or even prodromal symptoms. Sometimes she thought maybe, maybe just _maybe,_ it might be possible to not just flirt and connect and enjoy each other, but... be more. Be in a capital-R Relationship--and not have him know her secret. Everything they did together would have to be during the day, yes, when it was safe, yes, but... things... if they were going to do _things,_ those _things_ would not necessarily have to happen just at night, would they? If there were going to be _things_ happening, Maz still had her on the strongest suppressants on the market, and she had emergency blockers that would knock a rhino out of estrus.

It couldn't last long--most relationships didn't last, right?--but maybe it would be worth a brief risk. To feel something. To feel like this.

Alive.

And so happy.

When she went for her run that day, like she had every day for the past 13 days, she brought her little pocket metronome with her, because every time she thought about Ben she unintentionally speeded up. She practically soared.

* * *

It was 10:45 and Ben had decided to stop cooling his heels. He'd been pacing around outside the campus engineering building, trying not to be disruptively early for Rey's presentation, but _fuck it._ Another group of sorority Omegas had just gone by, all wearing enough pheromonal enhancers to smell like they were on the verge of heat, and while it would have once turned his head so fast his neck would've hurt, now it just seemed obnoxious. His one olfactory glimpse of Rey's scent put any other Omega's so desperately to shame that he really couldn't be bothered with them. How could he possibly get turned on by the smell of amped-up cotton candy and polyester lingerie when there existed a pretty much perfect woman who at least sometimes smelled like literally everything he'd ever truly wanted?

He jogged up the concrete steps, clanged open the big metal door, and glanced into various classrooms as he traversed the first floor. Within minutes, he caught the smell of an Omega whose scent had been on Rey a couple of the times they'd gotten together. He poked his head through the next door, and sure enough, there was a tiny Asian Omega in coveralls, wrenching at the base of a mounted electric engine and smelling distinctly nervous over the scents of molybdenum lube and hydraulic fluid.

He knocked on the doorframe and didn't move until the little woman turned around to see him. She smiled questioningly at him and then _sniffed._ Recognition washed over her face, she looked him up and down with wide eyes, and her scent turned suddenly sharp with mischief and feminine admiration.

"You're _Ben,"_ she grinned. "Well, step right in!" She got up and circled him like a petite shark, still holding her wrench. "Rey's mentioned you. A lot." She was clearly suppressing a laugh when she said, "She left out a couple of pertinent details, though."

He knew what she was grinning at. He was just fine with that. Let her admire the Very Dominant Alpha, and convince Rey that she should do the same.

"She here yet?"

"Oh yeah!" the little woman chuckled, and stuck out her hand. "I'm Rose, by the way. Rey's been here since, like, 6:30. She's been tuning the demo program and giving us all pep talks. She's helping the guys with their ties right now."

He shook Rose's muscular, minuscule hand while picturing Rey's face too close to some anonymous Alpha's. He decided he'd have to have trouble with his tie at some point very soon.

"You want to have a seat?" she asked. "I'd show you around, but I know she'll want to give you the tour."

He took a lab stool by the engine, where Rey couldn't help but see him when she came in. He looked over the engine itself, which was gleaming like it had been spit polished. It was just a big alloy cylinder with an open lid filled with some kind of inverter array above a complex actuator set, plus half a dozen computer components set in rows next to it and a battery bank down below. All the components were bolted to the floor. The drive shaft was hooked to what looked like a front-loader's hydraulic system that was connected to a six-foot by six-foot welded steel rack. The rack was half full of massive metal ingots and supported by some kind of piston-lifter. He wondered if the enormous slabs of metal were Rey's big purchase of steel from all those years ago, if she'd somehow planned this far ahead.

He saw movement at the door and Rey was stepping into the room, hands on the shoulders of two guys flanking her, saying, "If you get stuck, focus on your specialties and go to your talking points. You're going to do great--I believe in you."

When she crossed the threshold, she must've caught his scent, because she whipped around. Her whole face lit up, and Ben realized in his gut that Rose didn't need to convince Rey of anything. He stuck to his chair so that he wouldn't bound over and embarrass her in front of her team, and instead just grinned and said, "Couldn't stay away."

"I wouldn't want you to," she breathed. Then she collected herself and blushingly gestured around the room, saying "Guys, this is Ben Solo. He's the friend who's been mentoring me in startup logistics. He just had an exit with a sale to GE."

She introduced the team to him one by one--Rose first, the two identical bull alphas she'd walked in with (Jimmy and Timmy Teedo), followed by three skinny Beta guys (Dexter, Jorge, and Jignesh). Then she gave him a quick tour of the lab, showing him the engine's setup, the big laser cutters, the 3D printers, the mills and lathes, and the various design stations. She looked pleased when he told her he would've killed to have had access to that kind of setup when he was in his startup phase. Then her phone beeped, and she was gathering her people around her while he went to sit unobtrusively at the side of the room beside an air-return vent, so his scent would stay out of the equation. Free to just watch, he admired how she seemed to embrace the whole group with a reassuring, affectionate air.

Right at 11:00, the door opened, and things started to completely suck.

The smell of other-Alpha that was endemic to engineering spaces went from tolerable to moderately disgusting as maybe a dozen Alpha males and two Beta males, all in their mid-thirties to late fifties, came strutting into the room like they both owned it and didn't give a shit about it. They shoved electronic equipment aside to make room for themselves, circled the engine without even acknowledging the team, and then lined up to shake hands with the _Teedos._ The professor, an elderly, mustachioed Alpha, stood to the side with a clipboard, saying nothing. Rey had told Ben the prof was going to remain completely in the background while taking notes for the team's grade.

The oldest and biggest of the visitors, who was wearing work boots along with a watch that cost more than Ben's Beemer, said to the Teedos, "So, which one of you is Rey? Or are you both Rey?" and laughed uproariously at his own stupid joke.

"Actually," Rey said, stepping in front of the twins and firmly putting out her hand, "I'm Rey Niima. Great to meet you." She was smiling in a way that Bent could sense the anger behind. She was wearing what he'd suggested--hair down and feminine, new, pressed Carhart work pants, polished steel-toed boots, and an expensive white button-down shirt and navy blazer with their sleeves rolled up. He'd been dying to give her some subtle gold jewelry to complete the look, but he'd chickened out. The big Alpha looked Rey up and down, clocked her designation, and then skeptically shook her hand.

 _"You're_ the team lead? The _runner?"_

"I am," she said. "You must be Dave Carrington. I've seen your work on the new Mustang. It's a good-looking car."

Ben knew she actually thought the new Mustangs looked like Axe Body Spray smelled, but it mollified the guy enough that he asked, "So, little girl, what have you cooked up? I thought I heard something about heavy equipment in this room, not Easy Bake Ovens."

The visitor Alphas chuckled and the two fucking Betas in the back were grinning at each other and making some comment behind their hands, apparently about Rey's body, from their gestures.

Ben was on fire with indignation. He clenched his fists and had to physically force himself not to get up and intimidate the visitors. His brain supplied him a Technicolor, Surround Sound, Smell-O-Vision picture of him grabbing the big one in front and smashing his head against the smuggest Beta's in back. At the very least, he wanted to command them to put their heads up their own asses so their appearance would match their behavior. He took a breath, caught a whiff of his own aggression musk, and immediately dropped into a silent breathing exercise so he didn't cause a distraction. _Picture a forest, breathe in, breathe out._

This was about _Rey,_ not him.

Rey again proved that she was a better person than him in every way by just calmly replying, "You heard right. I've _engineered_ this electric engine for the heavy construction industry. It's currently capable of taking the place of an 850-horsepower diesel engine, with specialized--"

"Actually," one of the younger Alphas broke in, shaking his head, "heavy equipment requires low torque and high output with extremely stable response curves. I'm sure you didn't know that. Electric engines aren't capable of that kind of output, so you're wasting your time. What you need to do is supercharge a diesel engine with--"

"Excuse me," she said firmly, then repeated it _four times_ while that _fucker_ kept talking over her about workmen's safety and something about load retention. When he finally stopped, looking puzzled that she hadn't shut up in deference to his superior penis-having, she continued, "I'm aware of the demands on heavy equipment." She grabbed a remote that started the engine humming, "And as you can see, my team and I have engineered a solution with industry-specific, computer-controlled power-curve regulation and instant, on-demand battery response." She punched the controls, and the enormous rack of ingots behind her creaked and start rising on its telescoping supports. Rey stepped _onto_ the ingots as they rose into the air, steadying herself on the waist-high rack with one hand and holding the remote with the other. Ben and the visitors looked on her with total awe as her engine gently lifted her, plus tons of metal, almost to the 20-foot ceiling of the lab. She was now towering over the Alphas.

_I've completely underestimated you again, my love._

_My..._

_Oh shit._

_Well, yeah._

Then she said, "Gentlemen, you'll want to stand back. This is 3.4 metric tons of lead, plus a buck-twenty-five of me. You won't want to get in the way."

_Yep._

Then she slid her thumb across the remote and the block of metal pivoted rapidly on its axis, paused, slid up and down diagonally, paused, and extended forward and back through the room, smoother and faster than on any front-loader he'd ever seen. Rey rode it nonchalantly, a Mary Poppins in Carharts, narrating the potentially lethal demonstration with the calm charm of a museum docent. "Right now I'm taking the engine from zero power draw to 100% load velocity within 2.1 seconds per motion, with a soft-stopped power curve at each end. That's 45% faster than the fastest diesel on the market, without the jerking motions that cause load spillage and operator repetitive-motion injury." She gestured down at her team and said, "Implementing that capability was mainly the work of Rose Tico, our second in command."

Rose lifted her hand in acknowledgment, then Rey went on.

"The ability to perform _these_ highly refined movements, _"_ and the racks made a smooth figure eight, "was developed by Jignesh Jawaherlal, and the wiring work was done by Dexter Billings and Jorge Valencia." The Beta guys also raised their hands.

"Jimmy and Timmy Teedo, whom you've met, specialized in debugging the programming and wiring diagrams." The Teedos just shifted their feet and nodded, looking a little shamefaced.

As Rey ran through other capabilities of the machine while riding the weight rack around the space, the visiting Alphas were forced to gaze up at her like acolytes and track her all around the room, listening intently to catch her words and the words of the team over the creaking of the metal. It was so beautifully calculated that Ben almost felt sorry for those dickwads. When the engine settled the rack on the floor and she stepped off, all eyes were glued to her.

One of the smaller Alphas on the side of the room cleared his throat and said to Rey, "And what was your role in all this?"

"All the concepts and initial design work, and 59% of the labor hours," she declared

The man barked a laugh, "That's a pretty bold claim. I bet these boys have something else to say about that. You think they'll just lay down when the patent attorneys are deciding whose name goes on the IP?"

Ben's mind flared with offense, and he had to physically hold himself back from standing up to cow the man.

"Uh," Jignesh said uncomfortably, raising his hand like a third-grader, "she's actually telling the truth. We log our hours, and, um, we all agree Rey's name should be the only one on the patent. This is hers. The only other person who comes close is Rose. We're, uh, actually lucky to be along for the ride."

The Alpha quirked a highly skeptical eyebrow. "And what about when those two step out of the spinoff to have kids, when nature demands? Who's taking over then?"

At the blatant Essentialist reference, the whole team's scent went from nervous to _murderous._ Even a few of the visitors leaked a whiff of mortification into the room and crossed their arms and stepped away from the questioner. Ben flushed with guilt and self-disgust so intense he felt nauseated. The shift in the room was so instantaneous that the questioner jumped a little and said, "Uh, forget that question. That was inappropriate."

_Is this what Rey has to deal with all the time? This is what I--_

Another Alpha stepped in and asked a question about the actual technology, and then there was more discussion with the team members. By the time they were finished, some of the visitors seemed to be convinced that Rey was the real deal. About half of them directed their questions to the boys in the group, though, and only one or two acknowledged Rose at all. They asked a few questions about how the team expected to spin the tech off into the planned business, who would be in charge of what aspects, etc. but they interrupted and talk over Rey pretty much every time she answered them. Now that they liked her a little better, apparently they wanted to impress her by dominating the conversation with her. Ben's head hurt and his body was _aching_ to do something.

If he picked up and threw the big steel lab table he was leaning on, for instance, it would very satisfyingly break both the Betas' legs, and then he could maybe go to his safety deposit box, get his old Sig Sauer out, and shoot the rest of them. Instead, he shifted his shoulders and hips to create some movement, turned his neck, and breathed deep.

After almost an hour of this torture ground by and the class period was ending, the biggest Alpha said, "So, Miss Niima, how do you honestly think you're going to lead a group of mostly Alphas in the auto industry? Because when you get into the real world, the designation pool is going to shrink and the people who care about what you're doing are going to be Alpha males."

Rey put her hands on Rose's and Jignesh's shoulders, obviously preparing to talk about her diverse team, when one of those pheromone-reeking Teedos broke in _a-fucking-gain_ and said, "Uh, yeah, I'd like to speak to this."

Even from the side of the room, Ben could see that behind Rey's calm smile her jaw had tightened so hard her teeth might break, but it would clearly make too much of a scene to interrupt him, so she let him go on.

The young Alpha took a power stance and said, "My brother and me, obviously Alphas here. We had great Alpha leaders our whole lives, great coaches, great Alpha dad, great pastors and everything. I've been kind of an Essentialist my whole life, never apologized for it." The visiting Alphas were all nodding along with him, and Rose looked ready to tase him.

"Tim and I pretty much thought we'd join this team because Rey would drop out when the pressure got high and then we'd take over from her. But I gotta tell you, sir, Rey is the best leader I've ever had. I don't care anymore what her designation is. She brings out the best in people. She figures out how to use people's strengths to the max, gets people pumped about coming in every day, makes us feel like we're important no matter what we're doing. She lays down the law sometimes, but then things always get better than they were before. And she works harder than all of us combined. Seriously, I can't do half the shit, uh, _stuff,_ that she does without even trying hard. Tim and I were kind of assholes, uh, _jerks,_ to her for a long time, kind of rubbed her designation in her face, but she's made us totally rethink designations. Rose did too. Rose is a great engineer, better than any of the guys here, including me. And the Beta guys are awesome too. I'm proud to be on this team, sir, and if somebody gave me the option to work for Omegas like Rey like, forever, I'd totally sign on right now."

The room went dead silent, but roiled with scents, mostly of the taken-aback variety. The biggest Alpha chewed the inside of his cheek for a second. He looked the Teedo up and down, then his brother. He gave them a miniscule, man-to-man nod. He looked at the rest of the team gathered around Rey like the members of the Last Supper with their Christ. Then he put out his hand to Rey and said, "This has been enlightening, Ms. Niima. That was high praise. You should come see me after graduation. As for the rest of you, our companies are on the visitor roster. I think I speak for all of us when I say that you should contact us about internships."

As the visitors filed out of the room to go to the next demo, the professor gave the team a silent double-thumbs-up and followed them. The second the door closed, the team collectively sagged with relief, leaning on each other like a pile of tired meerkats. Ben felt acutely alone.  
  
Rose finally lifted her head off Jignesh's shoulder and said, "Thank _Beta Jesus_ they're gone. I wouldn't 'go see' that condescending jackass if hell froze over and my drink was out of ice."

"He's Satan in this scenario?" Jorge asked tiredly.

"He's Satan in _any_ scenario," Rose retorted.

Jignesh said, "Anyone else notice that he just tried to poach all of us from the company?"

Dexter drawled, "Yeah, and I betcha fifty bucks his internships are unpaid."

Rey just firmly hugged Jimmy Teedo, who, when she released him with a pat on the back, grinned and did a mini touchdown dance.

"Earned my first Rey hug!" he said, "Whoot whoot!" He high-fived his brother, who had just muttered something to Rey, probably an apology from the look on his face.

She just shook her head gently at the two of them, then turned to Ben, who'd been sitting on the sidelines in a mire of emotion. "You see what I deal with," she said fondly, looking at the team.

Ben said grimly, "Yeah. I saw."

He was so turned around--he felt like a piece of garbage who 1) wanted to kill a bunch of other pieces of garbage, then 2) grovel at Rey's feet while 3) hugging her in commiseration and then 4), rub his face on her to get the scent of those fucking other-Alphas _off her._ Could he be any more of a fuckup? His _job_ was to congratulate her right now, support her in whatever kind of screwed up victory she was having, but how could he fucking congratulate her? She'd spent an hour struggling to be seen even though she'd been shining like a human sun. He must've smelled or looked as upset as he felt, because she refocused her gaze on him and said behind her shoulder to her team, "You guys rocked. I'll meet you at the Dark Horse in 45 minutes. Order me some onion rings to get started."

The others filed out of the room, with Rose brandishing the "call me!!!" handsign at Rey, while looking pointedly toward Ben. Rey rolled her eyes at Rose and watched until the door closed behind her crew.

* * *

Rey had never seen Ben angry, or whatever this was. He smelled miserable, and pissed, and somehow deeply ashamed, for what reason she couldn't imagine. She walked up to him, close enough to see the golden flecks in his tormented eyes, put a hand on his arm, and asked, "Are you OK?"

He shook his head and said, "You were so amazing."

"You're upset because I was amazing?" she asked, almost teasing.

"Those guys..." he shook his head and looked around the room, as if seeing an engineering space for the first time.

"Are what I deal with literally every day," she said. "That's my life--and Rose's life, and Jignesh's and Dex's and Jorge's, too. Had you... never seen real Essentialists in action like that?"

He looked at her blankly, then dropped his gaze to the floor, to the engine, anywhere but at her.

She ventured, "Your family?"

He shook his head. "No, uh, pretty much my whole family is anti-Essentialist. Activists, even," he added faintly.

Rey felt a surge of _rightness_ as a bunch of Ben's behavior suddenly made so much more sense. Ben had been _raised_ to be anti-Essentialist. He didn't avoid talking about Essentialists because he maybe agreed with them--he did it because he hated them as much as she did and they pissed him off. That guilt rolling off him, it was on behalf of other Alphas. She'd wished, thinking it was futile, but _wanted_ Ben to really be one of the good ones, an Alpha male who'd never entertained an Essentialist thought, had _never_ imagined Omegas should be anything less than free, who might even fight for her someday, the _real_ her, to keep her free, using all the power and anger she felt radiating off of him. 

_Maybe._

_Maybe I could tell him._

_Someday._

_Maybe we could..._

Her breath caught as she looked at him and saw how he still looked lost and gutted, and so scared.

He asked, "Please... may I hug you?"

She stepped right into his arms.

She was so filled to the brim with happiness that it almost overflowed as tears. That he would be _afraid of losing her_ because she might think he was like the Alphas who'd made her life so terrifying, that he felt _guilty_ about Essentialists....

 _Nobody_ felt that way for her. Ever.

And _asking_ to hug her like that, so respectfully--she could practically hear Finn crow in his _yowza-yowza_ voice, _"Aw yeah,_ requesting affirmative consent! SEX-AY!"

She smiled against Ben's chest, breathed in his sad, heady scent, and spread her hands to touch more of him, skimming them over the long, muscular plane of his back. She murmured, "I know you're not like them Ben. I can see it, I can feel it."

He clutched her to him.

She said for the second time in her life, hardly knowing what it meant, "I'm not leaving you."

He relaxed a little into her arms, and pressed... a kiss... on the top of her head?

She could feel his big nose ruffling her hair, and just below it was... a soft, warm pressure. A kiss.

_My first kiss._

_A not-mouth kiss, but... wow._

_Another first something, with Ben Solo._

_Oh my god._

_Yes.  
  
  
_

* * *

Ben collapsed onto his couch and put his face into his hands. He might've been rocking. 

He'd begged off joining Rey's team for their victory lunch. Normally, he'd have dived into the opportunity to insinuate himself into Rey's social group, as excruciatingly awkward as that would have made him feel, but he had to get away and think about what the hell had just happened.

He had to tell her about who he was and what he'd done. He knew that now. If she ever found out from some other source... it would be a total fucking disaster. Now he knows why she hadn't used that insanely sexy confidence of hers to just jump his bones and have her way with him. She wanted him, he saw it in every line of her body when she'd spotted him in her lab. But Alphas were _awful_ to her. Alphas were awful to her Omega and Beta friends, to probably every woman that Rey socialized with on a regular basis, considering that she was an engineer and an athlete who was competing in both arenas against jealous, entitled Alphas. And Christ on a crutch, he'd been those dickwads' poster boy.

He had to tell her.

How could he _possibly_ tell her?

And how could he live with it when she ran because of it?

He lay back on the couch, not caring that his wet shoes were on it. In the dark behind his eyelids, the pictures he could never escape flood him. The aquamarine of pool water and the screaming face of Doph Mitaka's mother. The final slamming of his parents' car doors outside the Academy. The empty desks. The darkness under a brick windowsill. The doting, friendly faces twisting into rage. The dying, pregnant Omega in his arms. Everyone who had ever said they loved him, promised they'd love him, whom he couldn't help but love, had thrust him away into the great darkness when he had shown them what he really was. And he'd done so _fucking much work_ on himself to change, to accept himself, accept what life had given him, and move on, to be a man who could be worthy of a woman like Rey, and now his past, _again again AGAIN_ was coming to take away what he most desperately wanted.

_Fuck that._

He lay on the couch all night.

He wanted to call his old therapist, Dr. Tano, but she'd retired months ago.

He wanted to call Bridger or Johnson, but they were both sound asleep back East at this point.

He wanted to call Rey most of all.

When dawn was creeping over his balcony's edge, he remembered that he hadn't sent Rey a last-text-of-the-night last night, for the first time in weeks. She'd woken up in the dark without his presence touching her across the signals. He didn't like that. What if she thought he...? The little urgency he felt around it roused him off the couch.

He picked up his phone, and in his half-sleep, he'd missed the _pings_. There was a photo of the Fourth of July trailhead sign, then another of a familiar, empty campsite. It was the place that had once held his lonely tent and books, where he'd paced for hours trying not to think of the insanely beautiful Omega with the outrageous scent who'd descended on him for an afternoon.

The caption said, _"Hey look, it's where my luck improved."_

His eyes stung with tears, and relief trickled through his pain.

He wasn't going to tell her yet.

He'd make her see--no, he told himself carefully, he'd _show her--_ who he was now, how he would treat her, how he respected her, how he would love, honor, and yes, fucking obey her if that's what she wanted, before he told her. Because if they were going to have a chance, she had to know those things, had to love him, before she knew about the worst of him.

Right? _Right?_

He got up and headed for the shower. He wanted to look good when he showed up at the trailhead with lunch for her.


	17. Solo

2004

Solo was a month short of 18, and sitting on his narrow, crappy school bed, knee jiggling like crazy. His fucking parents were here. He'd gotten caught. Shit had gone wrong. Zach and Rob had turned out to be stronger than he'd thought and had taken his command further than he'd meant. The result had been a broken nose and wrist on Brandon, and Jake had gotten a concussion and a messed up shoulder, but instead of doing what they'd all agreed to do if someone needed a doctor, Noah had squealed. Now the Beta he despised was busy poisoning his parents' minds in some exciting new way, blowing this thing up into, what? Something it definitely wasn't, and way more than it was. Like he fucking _always_ did.

Solo got up to pace around the room, stopping to shadowbox in the square of bright afternoon sunlight across from the window until he was out of breath, then he punched his German textbook with already-purpled knuckles, grunted from the pain, and paced some more. Han and Leia were going to listen to Beta Boy talk about what he'd done and then come here and lecture him. Likely for about ten minutes before they left again, fucking whatever. Still, he'd packed his duffle just in case Luke had decided he was expelled and got to go home with Leia.

At that thought, he went to his desk and pulled out the top drawer, then lifted out the false bottom he'd made for it in woodshop. Underneath it was pressed his secret cache of letters. He flipped through them, reading a few. They always made him feel like a person--an _Alpha--_ again in the shittiest times. They made him both calmer and angrier, like he felt every time he heard from his friend.

9 September, 1998

My Dear Young Friend,

I'm delighted that you have used the instructions I provided to write back to me. You continue to protect our secret without fail and demonstrate to me again that you are full worthy of my trust in you.

The news of the loss of the Omegas in your class sounds quite devastating. Of course you feel the desire to protect them. They are gentle, fragile creatures, made for love and nurturing, and as a powerful Alpha, you sense that. The Omega is the natural partner and supporter of the Alpha, and you must feel quite unbalanced and alone without their presence. Your urge to live near them and protect them is a glorious demonstration of the natural order, the first order, of the human species. Perhaps someday you will come to visit me. The community I have built is one in which Omegas are always available to their Alphas, providing the love, respect, and families that nature demands, while Alphas provide love, protection, and leadership in return. Your strong Alpha instincts would be most appreciated here.

In the meantime, let your loneliness and rage at the injustices of your situation remind you of what is good and right in the world, of what you deserve. Let those feelings be your true and loyal friend in my absence, and in the absence of Omegas. They will keep you warm and sharp.

Sincerely,

Your Secret Friend

4 April, 1999

My Dear Boy,

How very wrong it is that you were not allowed to be junior captain of the baseball team, despite your top scores! That this has happened again--after your success in the fencing team, debate team, and soccer team were similarly robbed from you--is quite disgraceful. You would have been an excellent leader. Even if, as you say, your people skills are not ideal, I have faith that you would have become a fine leader in time, likely leading your team to a championship, if simply allowed the opportunity to practice leading. Your Alpha instincts would have guided you. It is your nature. Clearly, your Beta uncle and coach, who secretly seethe with resentment over your abilities, conspired against you to again further the ambitions of fellow Betas. It is a sign of their cowardice that they will not simply say to you what they feel and instead dance around with talk of "school rules" and "new policies." They are liars and thieves. Not one of these unworthies has the right to lead, not when you have clearly earned the privilege and have the inborn ability to do so. Perhaps you will someday visit my community, where we value honest speech, and lying Betas are punished most severely.

Perhaps Junior Reserve Office Training Corps would be a better fit for your unique and obviously outstanding abilities. You would still learn the discipline needed to become a mighty leader, but in a field you would excel in as an adult. Have I mentioned that my own community has a militia for our self-defense? I oftentimes look out over our training grounds and think what a fine addition you would make to the young men who train there. The Betas among them--all obedient footsoldiers--keep in their place, and the Alphas, of course, lead. Perhaps when you turn 18 you will consider yourself free to join us. In the meantime, I hope you will study the enclosed book, which is an enjoyable history of the natural leaders of the world (all Alphas, of course!). Your grandfather is featured in it. Perhaps you will soon be able to guess which one he is.

Also, I must warn you, that with the loss of the final Omegas in your class, you may feel tempted to turn your natural sympathies to the Betas. Resist this urge. It is an abomination, a twisting of your nature that comes only from the unnatural situation into which you have been forced. Trust only Alphas, and of those only those who are sympathetic--or whom you can lead to be sympathetic--to our great Essentialist cause.

Sincerely,

Your Secret Friend

9 July, 2001

My Dear Boy,

Ah, yes, the so-called Health and Society classes. You and I both know what they are--pure propaganda. Your questions about their inferior philosophy reveal your insightfulness. Yes, people of all designations have risen to a forced and legislated "equality," and some rare exceptions have done good in their misplaced roles, as some animals can survive in a zoo and provide pleasure to a gawking public. But surely you can see the cruelty and distortions this creates.

Alphas, with our powerful frames, our will to protect, our intellectual power, and our certainty in leadership, are designed by the creator to lead. Men of all designations have some of these qualities, but only in the Alpha male arises the perfect harmony of these traits. Identically, Omegas, with their nurturing hearts, their emotional minds, and their fertile bodies, are suited exclusively to mothering, mating, and keeping of the home. All women have some of these traits, but perfection in womanhood arises only in the Omega female. Alpha females and Omega males exist, but as simple genetic mistakes that must be kept curbed. The blurring--nay, _smearing--_ of traits in Omega males creates only the most disgusting perversions, which we must never contemplate. The most revolting forms of liberalism are the culmination of the Alpha female's agenda. And you have seen in your own cold, unfeeling mother the distortions of the Alpha female motherhood. It is a tragedy that you were saddled with such as her. And how you have suffered because of it.

And Betas, those who inhabit the great strength of neither the masculine nor the feminine, yet have gender? Their role is clearly not to breed nor to lead, any more than the worker honeybee's is. What a degradation of society must happen when the weakest are allowed dominance! The examples given in your "class" of societies--most in the past, most of them savage, you'll notice--in which disorder reigns in the form of Beta elder councils, Omega male shamans, and Omega females as rulers, are farcical in the face of Western history. They fall beneath our feet, they cower beneath our accomplishments. The mightiest of Omegas, the Anassa, the Queen, is not the ruler, you notice. She is the sweetest helpmeet and most fruitful mother known to man. In the same way, the mightiest Alphas are as you must become--the most stoic, the most unyielding, the most immune to deceit. Only such Alphas are worthy of mating and leading.

Thus, you see, the path of the Essentialist is the path to love. It is the path to thriving children, to joyful families, and to a mighty legacy of order.

Now, I have an assignment for you. As you read your textbooks for this class you must succeed in, note in an essay that you will send to me all the subtext, the lies, the distortions. Note the propaganda. Write me a true history from what you have decoded. Craft this essay well, as I will read it and respond to help guide your thinking. I do not want you to be alone with these weak-minded manipulators. I will be your light in the darkness, in the place of the Alpha father you deserved.

Sincerely,  
  
Your Secret Friend

29 August, 2002

My Dear Boy,

You asked again in your previous message for more information about me. Due to the hostility that your family feels toward Alpha males and our leadership, I still feel that we must keep my identity secret. However, I will tell you that I have a high role in government and that, unlike your unnatural mother, who has continually betrayed you in her feminist disdain and fear of your manly powers, I use my position to craft a world in which young people like yourself thrive in the roles to which they were born. In the future I am creating, Alpha men lead a world kept in harmony by obedience to God's natural law. We protect, legislate, innovate, and rule, according to the first order of the world. Betas like your misguided uncle have neither right nor reason to exercise jealousy, because they are provided with the work they were meant for--as obedient servants, soldiers, and the like. Omega women are the loving partners of Alpha men, serving as warm, loyal mothers, makers of the home, and givers of pleasure. Surely your instincts tell you how correct this natural order is for the human species. We are too alike for them not to.

Sincerely,

Your Secret Friend

12 December 2003

My Dear Boy,

I understand that the situation is becoming quite intolerable there, surrounded as you are by the venial, cowardly, and jealous. You say that you are ready to learn more of your heritage. I have, through intermediaries, revealed to the media the real identity of your extraordinary grandfather. Though his cause was thwarted, and he has been demonized by the conspiracy of liberals and treasonous anti-Essentialists, you will understand immediately what a mighty leader he was. I can only pray that you aspire to such greatness. Look to the news to learn of the man whose power you inherit. He would, I know, be proud to have you follow in his footsteps.

Sincerely,

Your Secret Friend

Then, Solo pulled out the latest one. The paper was still crisp and scented with the comfortingly rich, almost chocolately scent that they'd all come with originally.  
  
  


May 15, 2004

My Dear Boy,

I understand completely. Come join me, and the community that eagerly awaits you, in Colorado as soon as you are ready. We are the First Order.

Sincerely,  
  
Senator Paul J. Snoke  
  


Solo was already breathing hard, and his heart was pounding under his T-shirt, but this shot him full of adrenaline. He had fucking _choices._ And he wasn't going to just wait here in ignorance while two Betas and an Alpha woman decided what to tell him to do. He refolded the letters and put them carefully into his duffel, eased open his door, and snuck down the empty hall. Everyone else was in class, so he got through the dorm, across the quad, and to the headmaster's apartment without being seen.

He slipped silently between the big gap in the scraggly-ass hedges under the window and immediately heard his father talking.

"Look, man, I know I haven't kept 100% up to date with what's the kid's been up to here, but he was fine last summer. Rough start for a couple of days, but we spent two weeks in the woods, and he was... you know, fine. A good kid. What the hell happened since then?"

"The problem isn't what happened since then, Han," the headmaster said. "It's how he's been ever since he got here, maybe ever since he was born, and how it's escalated. I genuinely thought I could teach him, but he's got too much of Vader in him."

"I refuse to believe that," Mom said, and Solo felt both pissed off and a little gratified. At least she was defending him, even if fucking Luke was right for once in his pitiful life. He did have too much of Vader in him to be held back by their jealousy and lies. "He has enhanced Alpha abilities, but that doesn't mean he's a _Nazi,_ for god's sake. He's seventeen!"

"And Vader was only 22 when he invaded Poland!" Luke said. "I've toured the death camps he created, Leia. _Six million dead!_ I've seen the cities where every single building was razed to the _ground!_ That violence is in Ben's blood."

"For Chrissakes, Ben started a damned fight club," Han said. "He didn't kick off World War II! He's got a shit-ton of testosterone and alphelone. I probably would've done the same thing in a tight-assed school with hardly any girls, and I'm a Beta."

"And his abilities are nothing like Vader's," Leia broke in. "He can't command armies--you said it yourself that he's never commanded more than five or six Alphas at once."

"Do you know how far outside the realm of normal that is, Leia?"

"Yes, I damned well do. It's one in a million, I'm fully aware. But maybe that means he has one in a million drives as well, to lead, to protect--"

Somehow this made Ben angrier. If she'd been here, if she'd given a shit at all, if she'd been even _slightly_ maternal, then maybe she would have said that 11 years ago, before the Beta had started ruining his life.

"You're getting into very dangerous territory, Leia," Luke said hotly. "You've been fighting against Essentialism your whole career, since well before Ben was born, and now you're going to just turn your coat and say that Alphas should be handed leadership they haven't earned, just because they want it?"

"Don't you dare call me a traitor!" she snapped. Ben heard a chair scrape, as if Leia had stood up to pace around the room as she argued. He'd seen it a thousand times. "This has nothing to do with the fact that I'm an Alpha. I went along with you when you kept pushing him into positions where he'd have to learn to follow. I let you take away fencing and debate club, and everything else where he rose to the top of the heap, because yes, I agreed that he needed to focus on learning to listen and compromise and collaborate. But that doesn't mean it was right." Ben could hear her stop in the middle of the room, and her hard voice wavered. "Maybe we did this all wrong. Maybe we should've--"

"Just stop, Leia," the headmaster said. "This is becoming absurd. I haven't told you the worst of it yet."

"Worse than the kids in that club getting hospitalized?" Han asked. "Because that's pretty damned bad."

"He's been passing out Essentialist pamphlets," Luke said. "He's been recruiting. Here, at the school, using Vader's name. And he wasn't just running a fight club, Han. He was Alpha-commanding the other boys to fight. One of them told me this morning that he was going to get them to attack and possibly kill an Alpha girl."

Ben clenched his fists and leaned his forehead against the cold bricks under the window. _Fuck._ He wasn't going to have them kill Christina Robinson, but that vicious, bullying bitch was going to get a taste of what she'd put Ben through practically every day from the week he'd arrived until he'd finally hit his growth spurt and outweighed her this year. The bruises, the broken ribs and toes, the destroyed books, the disgusting rumors she'd spread about him--she'd be paid back in spades for that. He'd tried to tell Luke about her, had subtly tried to make him _see_ the injuries, despite the fact that Luke hadn't listened to him for years, but he'd done nothing. So he'd been planning to take care of _himself._ And yes, he'd been Alpha commanding the other boys to fight, because Senator Snoke had told him he should practice, that he could increase his command abilities to save lives in battle, when he had to lead and no one else was able to think clearly. But the guys had _agreed_ to fight beforehand, that was why they were in the fucking club. He'd just commanded them to do what they were already going to do so he could increase his powers. Skywalker was making him sound like a monster.

He waited, and waited, for what his parents would say to this, for how they would defend him. Say Skywalker must've misunderstood.

But they said nothing. And nothing.

Still silence.

Solo could practically see them sitting there, in shock, as slack-faced as if they'd been Alpha commanded themselves.

Leia's miserable voice. "You're sure about all this?"

"I have multiple witnesses for everything except the kill command, but the boy who told me that came to me because he was afraid of what Ben would make them do. He had no reason to lie."

Whichever that kid that was, he'd been lying, and Solo was going to figure out which one it had said it and make him pay. Probably fucking _Noah._

"Jesus Beta Christ," Han groaned. His voice was muffled, as if he had his hands over his mouth.

"OK," Leia said. There was another scrape, probably as she sat heavily back down in her chair. Even through the window, Ben could smell the sour reek of her terror and resignation. "OK, what do we do?"

_They're going to listen to him?! Those fucking TRAITORS!_

Solo was hyperventilating, trembling, vision narrowing as rage and the bone-deep pain of betrayal substituted themselves for his blood. He could barely think straight, much less hear, his body was so loud. He shifted up, putting his ear enough above the edge of the windowsill that he could hear every word, every breath of how they were planning on ruining more of his life.

Skywalker said, "I've been looking into a long-term solution. One that would prevent more people from getting hurt. You know that we have some Delta students here, right?"

Han said, "Delta--that's like the Dameron kid, right? Told anyone who'd listen he was an Alpha male from the second he... or _they_ back then? I can never remember how I'm supposed to say it now. But yeah, great kid."

Luke replied, "You have the general idea. Poe Dameron is both transgender and a Delta. The boys I'm thinking about aren't trans, just kids with Alpha characteristics, but they feel wrong as Alphas, don't ever want to have a rut, don't want to command or especially want to mate an Omega. They can't feel normal unless they're allowed to live as Betas or Omegas."

"What about them?" Leia said blankly.

"This year, some of them started taking a new medication that removes their Alpha characteristics. Permanently. It's called Erade."

"Wait a fucking minute," Han said. "That's what they give rapists for chemical castration!"

A frozen knife blade of terror slid into Bens' heart, and that monster, Skywalker, just rambled on.

"In Alphas, in the right dosage, it destroys the capacity to make alphelone and the excess testosterone that Alpha males produce. The glands are atrophied, the Alpha-linked brain structures and physical characteristics that they stimulate shrink, and most of them have enough hormones left to live as normal boys."

"Most of them?" Leia whispered.

"Well, some have problems that can be corrected with additional medication or surgery. Some of them go on to identify as asexual and agender, because the physical changes are so dramatic. That's rare." He paused. "I think it would be worth it to try on Ben, if it would prevent him from actually killing a child the next time he tries. Do you?"

There was dead silence in the room.

_They're... they're agreeing._

Ben sobbed aloud.

There was a flurry in the apartment as the people in there probably realized there was someone outside the window. Ben stumbled to his feet and ran, ran, back toward the dorms, long limbs flying, terror driving him like an animal. He ran to his room, thank god on the first floor, grabbed the duffle, and left. He needed a distraction. They were going to come for him. He dashed to Dan Carlisle's room at the end of the hall, dude was a fucking dope-head alcoholic. Ben kicked the door in, slammed his shoulder into Dan's always-locked wardrobe door to break it open, and pulled the vodka bottle and the weed stash off the top shelf. There was a lighter in the stash box.

Ben uncorked the vodka and dumped half it on the bed and the rest on the rug and walls. He flicked Carlisle's pretentious fucking Zippo open, lit the curtains and rug, then flung the lit lighter onto the bed, where flame burst up like a bonfire. He saw the fire lick right up the walls and ceiling before he dashed out. There was already smoke in the hall before he made it out of the building, and if he heard his father's voice yelling for him, he ignored it. Then Ben was running, running for the woods behind the school, and for the highway on the other side.

When he finally made it to the highway, scratched to hell by bramble bushes and dripping with sweat, face like a boy who'd seen his own death, no one even slowed down at the sight of his cocked thumb. In fact, most of them sped up. He walked backward for what seemed like ages, glancing between the oncoming cars and the column of smoke over the school. The building was ancient and had fuck all for fire suppression. He hoped the whole thing burned to the ground, with every goddamned kid and Luke and his parents in it, screaming in the flames. Where he was going, he'd be welcomed. He'd have the family he'd always dreamed of.


	18. The Prince

2004

Ben crouched in the exhaust-smelling dust under the highway embankment, miles from school. He needed to _think,_ but his head was full of _chemical castration_ and _Removes their Alpha characteristics, permanently,_ and _fire_. _Mama_ and _Dad,_ they were going to let that happen to him. They were going to let The Beta destroy him. _Fuck all of them. Fuck them, straight to hell. They weren't his parents anymore. Never would be again._

Sirens had gone past a few minutes ago, and he'd seen flashes of red paint, so it had been the first wave of fire trucks on the way to the burning school. The next sirens, though, those would be police, looking for him. He needed to get the fuck away from here, and he needed to get to his people, his _real family,_ his only family, now and forever. The Senator would protect him. The First Order was practically a law unto itself, most Essentialist compounds were, he knew that. If he could just _get there,_ he'd be safe.

A tang of bitterness in his mouth, he pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. Sixty-three dollars, his driver's license, and a debit card that had been turned off months ago\--another _fucking_ punishment. Thanks to his The Beta, he _might_ be able to afford a bus ticket halfway there, if he shoplifted every bite of food he ate on the way, and then he'd have to hitchhike the rest of the way. And no one seemed interested in stopping for him. No one at all. 

He thought of calling the Senator's office when he got out of the hills and got some reception, but knew those calls were recorded, and... _shit. His fucking phone._ He pulled it out of his back pocket, hastily wiped his fingerprints off it with his T-shirt, set it on a flat rock, and stomped it under his heel. The breaking plastic made a pitiful sound, like a squeaking animal being killed, then he kicked it into the dirt and flipped the rock over on top of it. He wasn't going to get tracked. _Fuck that._

His heart was pounding again. He needed to _think._

 _Direction, weather, water._ That's what his fucking father would've told him to think about. He could spit on everything else that Beta ever did or said, but at least he'd taught him orienteering. It was near noon, so he held out his arms and turned until they were perpendicular to his body in his shadow. OK, now he had a compass, with his head pointing north. He scrambled up the embankment, looked due east until he saw a rise in the distance, and sighted off it. Colorado was that direction. It was sunny and hot, so he'd need to stay in shade if he could, to keep from getting the shit burned out of his pale skin. And he knew there was a stream nearby--he and that fucking designation-traitor, Noah, had come across it on a day when they'd ditched. _Water leads to people, Benny Boy,_ his dad had said. 

Ben skidded back down the embankment, shouldered his duffel, and took off through the woods toward the stream. He clambered for what felt like ten miles in the dusty heat, through mesquite trees the color of dried blood and waist-high scrub that tore at his clothes and skin. He headed mostly downhill, looking for the hints of brighter green that would show him seasonal gullies, which should lead him toward permanent water.  When he finally heard the gurgling of the sluggish little creek almost an hour later, he went straight to it, knelt down like a penitent, and drank.

He splashed the water over his sweaty face, soaked his T-shirt in it, and then picked his way alongside it for another two hours or so before it entered a big concrete pipe under a railroad embankment. He went up to look at the tracks, and immediately realized from the shine on the metal that it was a functioning rail line. He didn't even have to think about it. He took a final deep drink of the water, and then left it behind and followed the tracks, stepping from tie to tie like a little boy. After perhaps another hour, he started spotting scattered houses, which made him dash cautiously from tree to tree, and then he came to a tiny mountain town he'd never been before. Still following the tracks, he spotted what he'd been hoping to see: a train depot, seemingly deserted. He slunk up to it, and, perfectly, it was locked up and seemed to hold only an electronic switching station.

He glanced around to make sure no one was in sight, and ripped a couple of crooked boards away from the rotted-out skirting of the depot's porch. He knelt down and looked into the darkness underneath. _Fucking spiders probably, fucking spiders everywhere,_ he thought with a shiver, and pushed his duffel bag in anyway. He crawled through the dry weeds into the mildew-smelling darkness after it, his skin already crawling at the idea of one of some big, hairy, biting fucker dropping on him, and pulled the broken boards back into place in front of him. He waited in the darkness for the train he knew must come, staring at the bit of sunlight shining between the warped boards. He ran his hands over his hair every few seconds, slapping his skin at the faintest tickle, trying to thinks about his next steps so he'd stop hearing the echo of _I think we should try it on Ben,_ on an endless fucking loop.

He knew train hopping was insanely dangerous. One slip of a sweaty hand off smooth metal and you could be chopped into pieces under the wheels, or slam your head on the ground for a permanent brain injury. But, what options did he have, really? His dad had refused to teach him to hotwire cars, and his face would already be all over the news. It made a kind of sick sense, anyway, that the one thing that could carry him away, from this place, from the school, from his whole past, was something that could kill him.

Thank the Alpha God that it wasn't long before Ben heard a distant, rhythmic rushing sound, and felt the faintest vibration under his fingertips. He frantically rehearsed what he was going to do: scramble out of the darkness, put on his duffel, chase the train until he got to a ladder, and pull himself up. Get to an empty car, and ride.

As the pinging, clanging song of the approaching train grew louder, then grew massive, and then, _perfectly,_ slowed to a grinding wail for a few moments beside the depot, Ben darted out from under the porch, slung on his bag, and jogged alongside the _fucking huge oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit_ train. A ladder on a closed boxcar slowly approached him from behind, and the second he could get his hands on the hot metal, he turned, took a terrified death grip of it, and jumped on. He pulled with burning hand as his feet tapped up the rungs, and pulled himself over the boxcar's rim onto its flat steel roof. The train seemed to start gently speeding up, and he knew he had to move fast, not be spotted, and get the hell inside a car. If he stayed up top, he was like as not going to be smeared on the concrete entrance of the first tunnel the train came to. On shaky hands and knees, he crawled to the swaying, red-oxide painted side of the car and stared up and down the line, looking for an opening. He had to lift his hands and put them back down every few seconds to keep the hot metal of the roof from scorching him. _There_ \--a boxcar with a slightly open door, the gap hopefully just big enough for him to slip through. 

It was ten cars back.

He was going to have to climb between the cars.

_Fucking shit balls._

He'd been so desperate to get _on_ the train and the fuck _away_ from the Academy that he'd just leapt on without thinking. How the hell was he going to get off the roof of this jolting car, swing himself over the edge to the ladder, climb back down, and then get across the swaying nightmare of the joint between cars? He glanced over his shoulder, looking at the land rushing up at him from behind. There were no tunnels or overhangs coming at him yet, but it was only a matter of time. Even a low-hanging branch on one of those big trees would wipe him out. And, if he took the precious time to climb down between cars, and he was on a joint when the train moved into one of the inevitable curves on the mountain track, he'd probably be thrown under and fucking die a hideous death. Experienced train hoppers probably knew how to do this shit, but he didn't. If there'd been someone, _anyone_ there with him, they would have heard him moan out loud as the thought swamped over him: he was going to have to jump.

He glanced behind him again, then gauged the distance between his boxcar and the next one. It was at least six feet, maybe seven, with death in the gap. _It's just a little hop,_ he told himself, _just a little nothing jump._ Senator Snoke would tell him to do it, he told himself, and imagined the wise, kind, powerful face of his friend. "You are an Alpha," he would say. "Your strength knows no bounds, your courage is mighty. Jump, and bring yourself to me!"

That did it for him. Ben crawled backward toward the middle of the car, his hands and feet already pinging and tingling with anticipation. He stood carefully, the boxcar swaying under him like an elephant, his muscles feeling like they were going to either cramp or explode from the adrenaline spiking through them. He took some fast, hard breaths, rehearsed the run and jump in his mind, replayed it again, again, again, glanced behind him one last time, and then _ran._ His feet thundered over the empty car, and he leapt. The world blurred as he stretched himself wildly in the air to make his landing, and he hit with a painful slam, landing practically facedown on the metal, one knee and both elbows hitting hard enough to make him shout, and his duffel bag flinging itself over his head and yanking him off balance. Gasping for breath and pushing the bag away, he looked back to see how close he'd come to the edge.

_Holy shit, six extra feet!_

He had no idea he was capable of jumping that far. He felt another flash of resentful rage at Luke and his parents for holding him back from every opportunity to prove himself, to know and show what he was capable of.

_I'll prove it to you bastards, I'll show you all. Again!_

He repeated the leap over and over, flinging himself through the air like an ungainly albatross. Every landing was a little better, until on the fourth jump, he landed on his feet and kept going. By the sixth jump, he felt like a goddamned eagle,like he was flying, flying away from everything that had held him back, flying toward a place where he would be accepted, finally, for what he was: a true Alpha male.

On the eighth jump, he was rapidly tiring, but the open boxcar was so close that he pushed on, pumped with adrenalin and righteousness. When he landed on the ninth car, much nearer the edge than the last time, he stumbled a little and then bent forward to gasp for breath, bag slinging itself around him to drag him forward as he sucked air. Just a little farther....

And then, looking back between his legs, he saw the tunnel.

The blank wall of concrete rushed toward him like a wave, maybe fifty feet away. The train was going at least 40 miles per hour, and there was nothing he could do but fling himself down, pressing his face to the metal car roof, feeling his skin burn, hoping not to die. With a rushing roar, the tunnel roof swamped over him, and in that second, it somehow grabbed him under the arms and _yanked._ He screamed as it dragged him down the length of the boxcar, scraping him over metal roof supports and molding. His shirt was torn off by friction, his skin was roadburned, and he writhed against whatever was holding him. His _duffel bag_ \--it was caught on the tunnel's edge and dragging him by the strap. He tucked his outflung arms tight against himself and jerked to get out of the strap, being dragged and hammered all the way. There was a sudden absence of momentum, and he was _free._ The bag fell off the edge of the car, and was gone. Then the tunnel roof was flashing over him as he was pulled deep inside, the singing, banging sounds of the train intensifying in its echo chamber. He just lay there, hyperventilating with terror and pain, the tunnel roof pouring over him like a black river, no more than a foot above him. He was barely three feet from the edge of the car. If he'd gone over the edge....

 _Alpha God,_ he thought, _thank you._

The train rocked under him, the air getting more and more toxic as they passed through whatever mountain they were inside. A few small sodium lights flew over him like dying yellow suns, illuminating concrete walls. A massive roaring sound started suddenly behind him and was getting louder, ramping to a bellow, then a howl. Ben put his hands over his ears, trying uselessly to block it out, and looked down his body to see whatever monstrosity was coming to eat him up. There was nothing in the tunnel, but the sound got more and more deafening. It was like being in the lungs of a screaming giant. He looked again, and there was a huge circular opening in the ceiling coming toward him. The sound peaked as he passed underneath it, and he saw inside it that it was filled to the rim with an enormous fan. The roaring was _a ventilation system._ Knowing that didn't make it any quieter, but his clenched asshole relaxed considerably and he lay back flat on the metal again. A dozen more of those fans roared overhead as he rattled through the mountain, and then they got quieter, quieter, quieter, until they were silent and there was light ahead.

In a flash, the sky was above him, the tunnel was gone, and he was free of the mountain again. He flipped over and lay resting on his bare back for a while, letting the terror flush itself out of his system, breathing the beautiful, clean air. He still panted, and then slowly began breathing easier as he came back to himself. The hot metal of the car under his sweat-soaked body wasn't so bad. It warmed him as the air rushed around his naked torso. The sky itself was beautiful, perfect, vast, and cloudless. Huge trees rushed past. The little town was far behind. Ben gathered his courage again, looked behind and in front of him multiple times, then crawled to the edge of the car. His stupid, fat duffel bag that had nearly murdered him was laying on the bottom platform of the car below him, just behind the coupler.

_Fuck it._

He swung himself off the edge of the car and onto the ladder, folding himself like bad origami to get his long legs onto it without falling. He descended the ladder, retrieved the bag from the canyon between the cars, and went back up, not even tempted by the narrow, constantly moving bridge between cars. He got over the top, checking for tunnels again, and made his final jump. His landing was good, and he immediately descended the final car's side ladder, which positioned him right beside the open door. He flung his duffel bag in the door first, then swung himself in. By some miracle, the car was clean, dry, and empty. He put his bag safely in the corner, got out a shirt, and redressed his bloody torso. The bruises and scrapes on his chest were ugly, but not especially deep, and if blood seeped through his black T-shirt, it didn't show. He sat himself on the open doorsill of the car, reveling in letting his feet hang off the edge and swing over the tracks. Death wasbelow him, death was all around him, but his body was defiant and safe. He scrubbed his hand over his face. Fuck them all. Fuck the danger, fuck the train, fuck his parents, fuck that vile Beta most of all. Ben was on his way.

* * *

It took Ben a week to get to Colorado. He rode the train all day and night, got off the next afternoon in some ugly little city to take a shit at a gas station and shoplift food and Gatorade, then caught another train going east, and rode for three more days. At the next city he stopped in, he found a bus station, spent all but three of his dollars on a ticket to Colorado, and rode to Colorado Springs. Then, he was fucking stuck. He'd scrubbed up in the station bathroom and put on a fake-friendly face that Leia Organa would've approved of, and started chatting people up, but not one person was heading in the direction of the compound. After two hours of trying to find a ride in, he walked out into the setting sun and paced around, trying to think of what to do next. He went past a record shop, a tattoo parlor, a daycare center, and then, what seemed to be a junior high. Nothing. Either he had to carjack somebody, or....

 _Fuck._ Right beside the school was a bike rack. And one of the bikes was _unlocked._

Three hours later, he finally saw the compound, after riding some eighth-grader's stolen mountain bike for thirty miles through the mountains, the last five miles of which were down a jouncing, exhausting dirt road. He approached the walls full of trepidation. Senator Snoke had been such a secret in his own life, would anyone here even know that Ben should be let in? He had the letters, but those could have been faked. Likely as not, they'd turn him away at the gate like St. Peter with a sinner. And the walls of the property were... intimidating. They seemed to stretch for miles in each direction, twelve feet high and topped with razor wire and broken glass. The gatehouse, which was twenty feet high and had something that looked suspiciously like gunports, was emblazoned with a logo that, he vaguely realized, was reminiscent of the Nazi Black Sun.

_Huh._

Through some kind of speaker system on the gatehouse, a man's deep voice boomed, "Ben Solo?"

Ben nearly gasped with relief, nodded, and waved feebly. _Thank fucking Alpha god in heaven._ The voice wasn't friendly, but at least it knew who he was. Somehow, the Senator had known he was coming, just as the great man had known so much else about his life.

Then, the man's voice said, "Welcome home."

An electronic lock beeped and the thick steel gate rattled as it began to roll open.

_Home._

Ben hung his head for a moment, winded from starvation and the long ride. _Home._ The word hurt to hear, but somehow, finally, it might mean something real now. He stepped off the bicycle and stumbled toward the gate. Before he could get there, the gatehouse door opened and an unbelievably tall Alpha man strode out, looking warm and concerned. He came to Ben and then stopped in front of him, looking him silently in the eye. Not hostiley. Just seeing him. It felt like it was the first time in his life it had happened, the first time since the last time his mother had done it before he'd almost killed Dopheld Mitaka. Ben looked up and up at the man, who had to be nearly seven feet tall, and saw that he looked... strangely like himself. Like a taller, handsomer version of himself. He was was black-haired and pale, with a long nose in a long face and big, liquid eyes. The nose actually fit his face though, and he had a strong jaw to balance it, normal sized ears, and a kind of unspoken charisma that just rolled off him. He was an Alpha's Alpha, the kind of man Ben wished he could be without ever thinking he could

The man had very little scent, as if he were on heavy blockers, and so was impossible to read through pheromones. But he reached for Ben's shoulder and just rested his hand there, warm and encompassing.Then he pulled Ben in for a hug.

It was the best hug, the first hug, he'd had since he'd last seen his mother. It was warm and solid and _safe._ Ben held back tears.

The man released him but left the hand on his shoulder, looked at him searchingly, and then said simply, "I'm Derek. It's good to meet you after all these years."

Ben stuck out his hand without thinking. "Years?"

The man firmly shook his hand, nodding slowly. "That's how long the Senator's been talking about you. Since you were a kid. We always hoped you'd come." He let go of Ben's hand after a final squeeze, and patted Ben on the shoulder. "Let's get you inside."

Ben slung his bag back over his aching shoulder, picked up the bicycle, and let the man direct him through the gate.

"How did you know I was coming?" Ben asked.

"The Senator's had us on 24-hour watch for you since last week. He's been keeping track of you, knew you were coming."

Ben shook his head. "I never knew how, but he always seemed to know what was going on with me at school."

"I'm sure he had someone watching over you," Derek replied. "I know he wishes he could have intervened in the hell you went through, but it might have made it impossible for you to actually get here at all in the end, if things had gone wrong."

"Do you... do you know him well?"

They stepped past the gate.

"Just drop the bike there." Derek said, and gestured beyond the gatehouse. "Unless you want it, you won't need it here. We have better rides."

Ben notice that Derek hadn't answered his question, but his gaze followed where Derek had nodded, and then all thought left his head. With its gullwing doors open to the breeze, a 1956 Mercedes 300 SL, one of the rarest, most beautiful sports cars in the world, was parked behind the gatehouse. It was stunning--like a silver goddess sitting there with her eyebrows raised at him, seduction in her gaze.

"Is that... real?" Ben whispered. He approached the car slowly, carefully, as if he'd scratch the paint by getting within a yard of it. His heart ached as he remembered the framed poster of this exact model of car that had been on his dad's study wall for as long as Ben could remember. It was his dad's dream car, he knew, right down to the silver paint job and softly shining black leather interior.

Derek's serious face broke into a wolfish grin. "As real as I am. You drive?"

"Ah, yeah, yeah of course," he said, unthinkingly. Of course Han Solo's son knew how to drive. Ben circled the car slowly, as if it were roped off in a museum. It probably _should_ be in a museum. This was a million-dollar car, at least.

"Then _catch,"_ Derek said, and a set of keys flew through the air. Ben caught them with a gasp. He looked at the keys in his hand. He looked at Derek.

Derek was not kidding.

Ben practically dove into the driver's seat, tossing his bag onto the little scrap of a luggage deck under the rear window. The seat was pushed as far back as possible, obviously for Derek's massively long legs. Ben moved it forward a touch, tilted the steering wheel back into the driving position from where it was cocked toward the floor, and reached up for the door handle. Reached _up_ for the door handle. _Iconic._

When Derek folded himself into the passenger seat, Ben was startled again at not being able to smell him. It was weird sitting next to another Alpha and having no ability to read them through scent, something he'd been noticing since he was old enough to remember being a person. But that was for later. For now, Ben dropped the clutch--as stiff and heavy as he'd expected it to be--pumped the gas, and turned the key. The machine roared like a big cat. He could feel the vibration all the way down into his crotch.

"It was the fastest production car in the world when it came out," Ben said over the thunder of the engine.

"And the prettiest," Derek replied, running his thumb over the glimmering aluminum dashboard. He pointed toward the blacktopped road that started just inside the gate. "Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Dorothy," he said.

God, this was all happening so fast, but Ben grinned half-deliriously and pulled the car slowly onto the road, briefly touching the brakes to see how grabby they were _(very)._ They rolled tentatively along, then Ben gently urged the car through first gear, second, and third. It was magnificent, like sitting inside a fantasy made live. The engine's astoundingly classy roar, the gleam of the instruments, and the smell of the leather all made a sensory backdrop to the weirdness of sitting beside this compassionate, scentless Essentialist who was giving him the best news of his life.

Ben had a thousand questions to ask, but the car and the hunger were just driving everything out of his brain. As much as he desperately wanted to stand on the accelerator and see what would feel like to peg out the 160 MPH mark on the speedometer, Ben kept it under 45 and drove _very_ carefully. Derek watched him checking and rechecking the speedometer as he drove, and said, "I appreciate you keeping it slow. On a day like this, we've got lots of little kids out playing in the woods."

Ben was a little startled. "By themselves?"

Derek gestured at the phenomenal mountainscape through the windshield, which rose up like teeth into the great mouthful of blue sky. "We'd never keep Alphas and Omegas inside on a day like this. School is for learning, but life is for living. If they can take a class under a tree, great. If they can't, that class can wait a while."

Ben felt a surge of jealousy. All those _years_ wasted inside Luke's other-Alpha-stinking hallways. Wait... "Just Alphas and Omegas?"

Ben thought he saw Derek shrug out of the corner of his eye. "Betas need more training in self-discipline. They get days off, but they don't need the freedom to explore that Alphas do, and we keep the natural allies together."

 _Natural allies. What Senator Snoke had said about Alphas and Omegas._ Ben's throat tightened.

"Where I just came from," he said bitterly, "they sent the Omegas away to special schools or home when they presented. It was just Alphas and Betas after a while."

Derek shook his head. "I'd heard that. That's insanity if you ask me. I don't know how you stood it for as long as you did. Having a bunch of little glandless ankle-biters yapping around you all the time, trying to act like equals, and no Omegas to balance your energies. What a mess."

"It was," Ben muttered. Some of those... ankle biters... hadn't been too bad, but it was not ideal. The lack of Omegas though, maybe that was the whole reason for his problems. If he'd grown up in a real family, with lots of Alpha brothers and Omega sisters and an Omega mother, maybe he'd have had the people around him he'd needed to not be violent. Maybe he'd have been... normal. Calm. Happy.

Derek said, over Ben's thoughts, "Well, you don't have to worry about that here. We have systems in place that keep people in right relationships. Who stays with whom, who does which jobs. You'll learn about how it works when you get to your rooms."

"I have rooms?" Ben asked hopefully.

Derek barked a laugh. "Of course you do. We've had them ready for you since you were a kid. You've got a sitting room and bedroom looking out over the mountains, big bathroom, nice study, pretty much everything you need."

Ben's head was reeling, half from hunger and half from giddy overwhelm. They've been waiting for him, _wanting_ him, these Essentialists, these people who understand how the world works, _finally._ Then he remembered how starved he was. "Is there a... what's the kitchen situation?"

Derek leaned back in his seat and said, "There's a community dining room where people go for company, but you'd be welcome to eat with any family here in their home. They'd love to have you. But if you're feeling private or working on a project, you can have your servants bring you whatever you want."

"My _servants?"_

"What do you think all these Betas are here for?" Derek laughed. "They need something to do, right?"

Ben laughed giddily along with him.

"I called in your arrival as soon as I saw you on the road. When you get to your room, they'll have a good meal and clothes and a bath ready for you, and then some of the Omegas will come over to get you settled in."

He was going to be fed, and then spend time with Omegas. He hadn't seen an Omega since the last time he'd left school, almost a year ago. He wouldn't say so, was sure it would be rude, but he hoped they were pretty, and his age.

"Will I see Senator Snoke soon?"

Derek said firmly, "Inside these walls, we call him the Supreme Leader, and yes. He's in D.C now for a vote on one of his bills, but as soon as it's over tomorrow he'll come back on his jet to meet you."

The _Supreme Leader._ Wow. If a man like Derek called the Senator that title, he must've earned it.

Ben was disappointed that he wouldn't, finally, meet his savior tonight, but it would be far better to make a good impression, to be clean and thinking straight instead of filthy and falling over from hunger. The Mercedes came over a crest in the forest and a wide valley, maybe a couple of miles wide, splayed out in front of them. It was speckled with boxlike buildings of various sizes, all white and bright, all modern. Some were covered in windows, some had only a few or none at all. They were surrounded by fields of growing things, tidy and beautiful, with a cow pasture off on the edge. It looked like a domestic paradise.

Derek pointed in front of them. "See that biggest building down there? That one's where you'll park, in the underground garage. The slot's beside the stairwell. It says 'The Prince' on it."

Ben smiled. "Is that the car's name?"

Derek smiled his slightly wolfish smile again. "No, that's _you_. And the car is yours now, so you get to name it."

Ben managed to keep driving in a straight line, but barely.


End file.
